- A new meta-analysis suggests that mental health interventions may improve symptoms associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
- The researchers tracked biomarkers of IBD to reach their conclusion.
- The findings show psychological therapy was highly effective at reducing IBD symptoms.
A new meta-analysis — study of studies — from New King’s College in London reinforces existing knowledge of the brain-gut axis that links mental health to the development and behavior of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
The findings show that improving depression and anxiety symptoms in people with IBD reduces the severity of the condition by statistically significant amounts.
Mental health therapy interventions, in particular, were most successful at alleviating the inflammation associated with IBD.
Antidepressants and exercise also resulted in improvements, though smaller.
Rather than relying on self-reporting of IBD symptoms, the researchers tracked levels of two biomarkers commonly associated with IBD inflammation: calprotectin and C-reactive protein (CRP).
After searching five medical databases for relevant studies, the authors of the study analyzed data from 28 random, controlled trials involving 1,789 participants. Where biomarker data existed, it was incorporated in the study’s analysis.
The study is published in
The new study builds on existing evidence establishing a confirm the connection between IBD and mental health.
The study’s first author, PhD student Natasha Seaton, a PhD student at King’s College, cited several statistics from a
“Depression and anxiety are common in people with IBD. 25% percent of people with IBD have clinical levels of depression, 32% have clinical levels of anxiety. These rates rise to 39% and 58%, respectively, when disease is active and inflammation levels are higher.”
“If you take a snapshot of IBD patients at one time period, it seems as though some inflammatory markers are associated with anxiety [or]…
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