Depression is a very common mental disorder that affects 5% of adults worldwide (about 280 million people), according to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO). Women are more likely to develop depressive symptoms which, in the most severe cases, can lead to suicide, and in any case significantly reduce the quality of life of patients, so identifying the causes can alleviate their suffering.
A new study by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has made a curious discovery, and that is that people with depression have higher body temperatures, suggesting that lowering the temperature of people with the disorder such Maybe it could help improve your mental health.
“To our knowledge, this is the largest study to date examining the association between body temperature (assessed using self-report methods and wearable sensors) and depressive symptoms in a geographically large sample,” said lead author Ashley Mason. of the study and associate professor of psychiatry at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “Given the rising rates of depression in the United States, we are excited about the possibilities of a new avenue of treatment,” she adds.
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The researchers analyzed data from 20,880 participants from around the world (53% men and 47% women) who wore a device that measured body temperature and also reported daily on their body temperature and depression symptoms. The study began in early 2020, lasted seven months, and included data from 106 countries.
The results of the study have revealed that, with each increase in the level of severity of depression symptoms, the participants had higher body temperatures. The body temperature data also showed a trend toward higher depression scores in people whose temperatures had fewer fluctuations over a 24-hour period, but this finding was not significant.
The findings shed light on how a new method of treating depression could work, Ashley Mason said. A small set of previously conducted causal studies has found that using hot tubs or saunas can reduce depression, possibly by causing the body to cool itself, for example through sweating.
The results reveal that with each increase in the level of severity of depression symptoms, participants had higher body temperatures
“Ironically, warming people can actually lead to a reduction in body temperature that lasts longer than cooling them directly by immersing them in an ice bath,” explained Mason, who is also a clinical psychologist at the Osher Center for Integrative Health in New York. UCSF. And she wonders: “What if we could track the body temperature of patients with depression to properly schedule heat-based treatments?”
The results have been published in Scientific Reports and do not indicate whether depression raises body temperature, or whether a higher temperature causes depression. It is also unknown whether the higher body temperature observed in people with depression means that they have a lower ability to cool themselves, that they generate more heat from metabolic processes, or a combination of both factors, so further research is needed.
