11 Aug Serious Infections Associated With Increased Risk of Suicide

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Helene Lund-Sørensen BM
Department of Biomedical Sciences
Section of Cellular and Metabolic Research
University of Copenhagen

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Accumulating research has shown that inflammation and infections are associated with psychiatric diagnoses and interactions between infectious agents, known to affect the brain, and suicidal behavior have been reported.

We find an increased risk of death by suicide among individuals hospitalized with infections. The risk of suicide increased in a dose-response relationship with the number of hospitalizations with infections and with the number of days hospitalized with infections. We also examined the risk of suicide association with the time since the last hospitalization with infection and found that infection was linked to an elevated risk with the strongest effect after 1 and 2 years compared with those without infections.

MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report?

Response: Our study can show an association, but not prove that serious infections directly contribute to suicide risk.However, our findings do indicate that environmental factors, such as infections, may be relevant and play an important role in the pathophysiological mechanisms of suicidal behavior.

MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Response: Our study can show an association, but not prove that serious infections directly contribute to suicide risk.However, our findings do indicate that environmental factors, such as infections, may be relevant and play an important role in the pathophysiological mechanisms of suicidal behavior.

MedicalResearch.com: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Response: Indeed, there are many potential mechanisms that might link infections to death by suicide. Therefore we also carefully included specific key risk factors for suicide in the analysis including sex, age, calendar period, cohabitation status, socioeconomic status and chronic physical diseases. We also acknowledge the fact that the association between infections and suicide could be an epiphenomenon or mediated through other related predictors. For example the psychological impact of being hospitalized with a severe infection might affect the risk of suicide; however, after adjusting for the effect of chronic physical diseases utilizing the Charlson Comorbidity Index, the associations between infections and suicide was still significant.  

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Last Updated on August 11, 2016 by Marie Benz MD FAAD