Background: Several studies have investigated the relationships of lipid levels with depressive and anxiety disorders, and their results revealed an association between low cholesterol and higher levels of depressive symptoms in young, middle-aged, and postpartum women. However, few studies have explored this relationship in menopausal women. Hence, in this study of menopausal Taiwanese women, we attempted to determine the correlation of depressive and anxiety disorders with serum lipid profiles.
Methods: This was a cross-sectional study covering a 2-year period. Sixty-nine menopausal women who visited the gynecologic outpatient department of our hospital were enrolled. Psychiatric diagnoses were made using the semi-structured clinical interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) criteria. Blood samples for serum lipid profiles were simultaneously collected. Data were analyzed using analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA) adjusted for age and body mass index (BMI).
Results: Total cholesterol (TC) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) were higher in postmenopausal women than in perimenopausal women, but this was not true for triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL), the TC/HDL ratio, or the LDL/HDL ratio. However, when peri- and postmenopausal women were categorized into normal controls and those having anxiety disorders and depressive disorders, no significant differences were found in lipid concentrations of TG, TC, HDL, VLDL, LDL, TC/HDL, or LDL/HDL among the 3 groups.
Conclusions: Although these results do not suggest that serum lipid profiles can be used as biological markers to distinguish depressive or anxiety disorders in menopausal women, larger samples are required to prove such results in the future.