Depressive Symptoms Are Linked To Early Death In Cancer Survivors

Depressive Symptoms Are Linked To Early Death In Cancer Survivors

Depressed cancer survivors are two times as likely to die prematurely than those who confer not suffer from depression, irrespective of the cancer locality. That's according to a of recent origin study, by Floortje Mols and colleagues, from Tilburg University in The Netherlands. Their be is published online in Springer's Journal of Cancer Survivorship.

The universality of cancer is rising, as are the include of individuals who are cured of their cancer or are course of life with it as a chronic disease. This is partly due to the aging of the populousness and more effective treatments. As a event, many of these survivors face continuing problems debt to cancer and its treatment, including a acute prevalence of depression.

Mols and team examined whether depressive symptoms observed betwixt one and ten years after cancer diagnosis were linked to every increased risk of premature death brace to three years later. Their operate focused on survivors of endometrial cancer, colorectal cancer, lymphoma or multiple myeloma, in which place little work looking at this possible link has been done to era.

They analyzed data collected from separate large population-based surveys in 2008 and 2009. A total of 3,080 cancer survivors completed questionnaires to take for identical symptoms of depression.

The authors mould that depressive symptoms increased the exposure to harm of death: clinically high levels of depressive symptoms were more common in those who died than in those who survived. Overall, subsequently controlling for treatment, type of cancer, co-morbidity, and metastasis, one-to-ten-year cancer survivors with depression were twice as likely to be favored with died early.

The researchers conclude: "Paying application to the recognition and treatment of depressive symptoms in this assiduous group is key. The next step is to investigate the possible mechanisms that might reduce to law the association between depressive symptoms and death from cancer. We also need to more acceptable understand whether treatments for depressive symptoms in cancer patients be under the necessity life-prolonging effects."