Neuroticism is positively associated with leptin/adiponectin ratio, leptin and IL-6 in young adults

Abstract

High neuroticism is related to cardiovascular morbidity. Early detection of metabolic and cardiovascular risk is important in high-risk groups to enable preventive measures. The aim of this study was therefore to explore if neuroticism is associated with early biomarkers for cardiovascular and metabolic disease in young adults from a psychiatry cohort. Blood samples and self-ratings on neuroticism with the Swedish universities Scales of Personality (SSP) questionnaire were collected from 172 psychiatric outpatients and 46 healthy controls. The blood samples were analysed for plasma leptin, adiponectin, CRP, IL-6 and TNF-α. Associations between neuroticism and biomarkers were assessed using Spearman’s correlation coefficients and generalized linear models adjusting for confounders. In the adjusted generalized linear models, neuroticism predicted the leptin/adiponectin ratio (p = 0.003), leptin (p = 0.004) and IL-6 (p = 0.001). These associations were not better explained by current major depressive disorder and/or anxiety disorder. Adiponectin, CRP and TNF-α were not associated with neuroticism. In conclusion, the findings suggest that high neuroticism is related to elevated levels of plasma leptin/adiponectin ratio, leptin and IL-6 in young adults. Young adults with high neuroticism may therefore benefit from preventive interventions to decrease the risk for future metabolic and cardiovascular morbidity, but more research is required to test this hypothesis.

Correlations between personality traits, personality disorders, and immunometabolic markers

“…Leptin might act as a proxy for the association between BMI and neuroticism (ρ = 0.62, p < 0.001) in our results, but this is questionable in relation to earlier research showing variable metabolic activity within the same BMI range 42 . The correlation between high neuroticism and elevated leptin levels was in line with our hypothesis as well as with a previous study of another cohort of young adults published by Syk et al 11 . In that study, the effect size expressed as ln(β) was 0.019 for the estimate of neuroticism predicting leptin, which is similar to the finding in our study (OR 1.06).…”

“…The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that elevated leptin in blood is correlated with sustained neurotic traits as shown in our previous study of young adults 11 . We additionally performed an exploratory analysis of an expanded set of chemokines and growth factors in blood samples taken from a cohort of young former psychiatric patients, followed up after 12 years, focusing on correlations with personality traits or PDs.…”

“…Immunometabolic markers, such as the appetite-regulating hormone leptin, have also been shown to be correlated with traits of normal personality. One study showed that low conscientiousness, but not neuroticism, was associated with high leptin levels in blood 16 , whereas another showed a correlation between high leptin levels in blood and neuroticism 11 . However, studies on correlations between personality traits and immunometabolic markers are limited, especially studies that include temporal factors, making the current study important.…”

Keratoconus and Personality Traits: A Case–Control Study

“…44 Interestingly, an upregulation of similar proinflammatory mediators (eg, IL-1, IL-6, and IL-12) has been widely described in the serum samples of patients with various dysfunctional personality traits and temperaments, including obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and neuroticism, respectively. [45][46][47] As such, it is possible to hypothesize that a genetic/epigenetic background favorable to developing a systemic proinflammatory cytokine milieu is responsible for overlapping dysfunctional personality traits and KC in the same patient.…”

Personality Traits and Inflammation in Depressive Disorders

“…Spanish research also indicated that high neuroticism (among other risk factors) is associated with depression [ 25 ]. Additionally, Swedish research presented existing link between IL-6 and neuroticism [ 26 ]. Chen et al (2021) presented results of a longitudinal research on early adulthood depression and associated it, among many other things, positively with neuroticism and psychoticism and negatively with extroversion [ 27 ].…”