Brief reportCortisol, the Cortisol-Dehydroepiandrosterone Ratio, and Pro-Inflammatory Cytokines in Patients with Current Major Depressive Disorder Comorbid with Borderline Personality Disorder
Section snippets
Methods and Materials
The study was approved by the local ethics committee at the University of Luebeck (Institutional Review Board), and all women in the patient and the comparison group gave their written informed consent before the beginning of the study. Twelve unmedicated female patients consecutively admitted to our hospital who met the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for current MDD and BPD were included. All patients were drug-free at the time of testing and had not received antidepressant or neuroleptic
Results
Patients and comparison subjects were of comparable age (p = .72) and had comparable smoking habits (p = .89), but patients tended to be heavier (p = .14) and less active (p = .16) (Table 1). Repeated measures ANOVA revealed elevated serum cortisol concentrations [F(1) = 5.2, p = .033] (Figure 1) and an increased cortisol-DHEA ratio in patients when compared with healthy subjects [F(1) = 7.9, p = .01] (Table 2). We found increased serum concentrations of TNF-α [F(1) = 8.5, p = .008] and IL-6 [F
Discussion
We found elevated concentrations of cortisol, as determined on the basis of the serum profiles, in depressed patients with comorbid BPD. Our results point to a dysregulation of the HPAS in these patients and are in line with observations by others who found alterations of the HPAS (elevated free cortisol, cortisol non-suppression) in depressed patients without comorbidity (reviewed by Heuser 1998, Holsboer and Barden 1996). Interestingly, the alterations observed in MDD have been described more
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