Are Cholesterol and Depression Inversely Related? A Meta-analysis of the Association Between Two Cardiac Risk Factors

Abstract

TC and depression were inversely related, with the strongest associations in medically naïve samples, which is noteworthy because such samples should involve fewer confounds. One clinical implication is that the lipids of patients treated for depression should be monitored.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and Their Comorbidity as Predictors of All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality: The Vietnam Experience Study

“…Finally, they were more likely to be a current smoker and to drink more units of alcohol per week; had lower total cholesterol, and were more likely to have a physical illness. A recent meta-analysis also found that low cholesterol levels have been observed in those with depression, perhaps as a result of candidate mechanisms such as suppressed appetite, cytokine activation, and reduced availability of serotonin (39). The same differences emerged for those with and without GAD except there were no differences in total cholesterol.…”

Application of fatty acid and lipid measurements in neuropsychiatry

“…Dimopoulos found a correlation between low TC and depression in the elderly patients [73]. Shin in a meta-analysis [74] found that higher TC was associated with lower levels of depression. De Berardis and co. found that TC is low in all clinical groups with bipolar disorder [75].…”

The Relationships Between Self-Rated Health and Serum Lipids Across Time

“…A recent study [27] found, based on a longitudinal design in which five waves of data were analyzed, that SRH unidirectionally predicted depressive symptoms while the reverse causation hypothesis was not supported. High levels of depressive symptoms were shown in a meta-analytic study [38] to be related to high levels of HDL-C and to low levels of LDL-C (the latter meta-correlation was not significant, however).…”