COPD Patients At High Risk For Diagnosis Of Depression

Persons with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) appear to have significantly increased risk of developing depression when compared with other patients with chronic health condition like diabetes and other healthy individuals.

COPD is a progressive health condition that makes the affected persons hard to breathe.

This particular chronic breathing disorder can cause wheezing, chest tightness, coughing that produces large amounts of mucus, shortness of breath and other symptoms. Smoking habit is main risk factor and leading cause of COPD.

According to Lisette van den Bemt from Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, The Netherlands,” the link between COPD and depression is found earlier, but this study specifically adds that we found temporal relationship, in clear words; COPD did lead to a greater risk for diagnosis of depression”.

But, it seems that the greater risk of depression is not actually result from having chronic health condition, but it is specific for COPD patients.

According to a study conducted by van den Bemt’s team, almost 999 COPD patients are at high risk of initial diagnosis of depression, 978 are at risk of diabetes and 2494 without any chronic health conditions.

They’ve concluded that the risk of diagnosis of depression is much higher in COPD patients than other individuals with controlled health conditions.