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Psychological distress and infectious disease mortality in the general population

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journal contribution
posted on 2019-01-09, 09:06 authored by Mark Hamer, Mika Kivimaki, Emmanuel Stamatakis, G. David Batty
There is a paucity of studies examining the relation between high psychological distress and infectious disease in the general population. We examined this association in a large multi-cohort study drawn from the general population. The analytic sample comprised 104,923 men and women (age, 47.3 ± 17.4 year; 45.7% men) in which psychological distress symptoms was assessed using the 12-item version of the General Health Questionnaire. There were 1535 deaths attributed to infectious diseases during 971,220 person-years of follow up (mean 9.3; range 0.1–17.1 years). A dose-response association between GHQ-12 score and all infectious disease mortality was observed after adjusting for age, sex, survey year, occupational social class, longstanding illness, smoking, alcohol, and physical activity (per SD increase, hazard ratio = 1.24; 95% CI, 1.20–1.28). A similar pattern was apparent for viral infections (1.23; 1.14, 1.33) and pneumonia (1.20; 1.13, 1.28), but weaker for bacterial infections (1.09; 1.00, 1.19). In conclusion, psychological distress is associated with higher risk of infectious disease.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Brain, Behavior, and Immunity

Volume

76

Pages

280-283

Citation

HAMER, M. ... et al, 2018. Psychological distress and infectious disease mortality in the general population. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 76, pp.280-283.

Publisher

© Elsevier

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2018.12.011

Acceptance date

2018-12-19

Publication date

2018-12-20

Copyright date

2019

ISSN

0889-1591

Language

  • en