Background: The presence of neck-shoulder pain as a predictor of depression is not widely studied.
Aim: To analyse the association of neck-shoulder pain at baseline with depressive symptomatology after a 7-year follow-up.
Methods: A total of 604 subjects who had not had depressive symptomatology at baseline participated in 7-year follow-up survey. The number of subjects with depressive symptomatology (Beck Depression Score10) after 7-year follow-up were measured in three groups - subjects without neck-shoulder pain, with infrequent neck-shoulder pain and with daily neck-shoulder pain at baseline.
Results: A total of 77 (13%) participants had developed depressive symptomatology by the follow-up. Prevalence of depressive symptomatology in follow-up in subjects without neck-shoulder pain, with infrequent neck-shoulder pain and with daily neck-shoulder pain at baseline pain was 9.5%, 11.2% and 28.4%. In multivariate logistic regression analysis odds for having depressive symptomatology in daily neck-shoulder pain subjects was almost three fold higher (OR, 2.64, 95% CI, 1.27-5.48) compared to those without neck-shoulder pain.
Conclusions: Frequent neck-shoulder pain is a preceding symptom for the depressive symptomatology in adults.