A huge study spanning 30 years that analyzed a cohort of over one million individuals determined a strong affiliation among people suffering from stress disorders, like PTSD, and an expanded risk of growing autoimmune sicknesses which includes arthritis and Crohn’s disease.
Since a lot of us have experienced stress manifesting in physical signs, such as stomach aches, for instance, the connection between particular traumatic life stresses and autoimmune diseases can seem a bit apparent. Although, there has been controlled study into the straight link between stress-based mental conditions and particular immune-associated disorders.
The new, tremendously large-scale observational study analyzed over a million subjects in Sweden for a duration of 30 years. About 100,000 people have been identified with a stress-associated disease, from PTSD to acute stress response and adjustment disorder. These people had been matched with one million subjects who, over the 30-year duration were no longer identified with any stress-related disorder.
The surprising results determined that those stricken by a stress-related disease are 30-40% much more likely to sooner or later be identified with 1 of 41 autoimmune sicknesses. These autoimmune diseases include psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, celiac disease and Crohn’s disease.
According to one of the study’s head researchers, Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir, they realize from previous studies that an excessive amount of stress can disrupt the immune system, but this is the first time a link between PTSD and other stress disorders and expanded risk of autoimmune sicknesses in a large pattern of people were seen.
The risk of autoimmune diseases has elevated in instances of people diagnosed at a younger age with PTSD. And surprisingly, those people getting antidepressant treatment for PTSD showed lower chances of developing subsequent autoimmune sicknesses soon after diagnosis. While this previous point virtually supports a speculation suggesting a causal connection between stress and the onset of an autoimmune disease, the scientists are careful to feature this because it is simply an observational study so only a relationship can be drawn.
The most convincing conclusion that we can get from the study is probably an assertion of the firm connection between mental stress and physical inflammatory conditions. There is a captivating hypothesis developing in a few research fields suggesting numerous mental diseases come from inflammation within the brain.
