Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands.
University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Department of Psychiatry, Interdisciplinary Center Psychopathology and Emotion regulation (ICPE), Groningen, The Netherlands.
Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2023 Dec;158:106394. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2023.106394. Epub 2023 Sep 22.
Depression can be understood as a complex dynamic system where depressive symptoms interact with one another. Cortisol is suggested to play a major role in the pathophysiology of depression, but knowledge on the temporal interplay between cortisol and depressive symptoms is scarce. We aimed to analyze the temporal connectivity between salivary cortisol and momentary affective states in depressed individuals and controls. Thirty pair-matched depressed and non-depressed participants completed questionnaires on momentary positive (PA) and negative (NA) affect and collected saliva three times a day for 30 days. The association between cortisol and affect was analyzed by dynamic time warp (DTW) analyses. These analyses involved lag-1 backward to lag-1 forward undirected analyses and lag-0 and lag-1 forward directed analyses. Large inter- and intra-individual variability in the networks were found. At the group level, with undirected analysis PA and NA were connected in the networks in depressed individuals and in controls. Directed analyses indicated that increases in cortisol preceded specific NA items in controls, but tended to follow upon specific affect items increase in depressed individuals. To conclude, at group level, changes in cortisol levels in individuals diagnosed with a depression may be a result of changes in affect, rather than a cause.
抑郁可以被理解为一个复杂的动态系统，其中抑郁症状相互作用。皮质醇被认为在抑郁症的病理生理学中起主要作用，但关于皮质醇和抑郁症状之间的时间相互作用的知识还很缺乏。我们旨在分析抑郁个体和对照组唾液皮质醇和瞬间情感状态之间的时间连通性。30 对配对的抑郁和非抑郁参与者完成了关于瞬间积极（PA）和消极（NA）情绪的问卷，并在 30 天内每天采集三次唾液。通过动态时间扭曲（DTW）分析来分析皮质醇和情感之间的关联。这些分析包括滞后 1 到滞后 1 向前的无向分析以及滞后 0 和滞后 1 向前的有向分析。在网络中发现了个体间和个体内的较大的变异性。在组水平上，在抑郁个体和对照组中，无向分析表明 PA 和 NA 在网络中相互连接。有向分析表明，在对照组中，皮质醇水平的升高先于特定的 NA 项目，而在抑郁个体中，皮质醇水平的升高往往滞后于特定的情感项目。总之，在组水平上，诊断为抑郁症的个体的皮质醇水平的变化可能是情感变化的结果，而不是原因。
