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The Association Between Autoimmune Disease & Perinatal Depression

Hannah Frye
Author:
February 12, 2024
Hannah Frye
Assistant Beauty & Health Editor
By Hannah Frye
Assistant Beauty & Health Editor
Hannah Frye is the Assistant Beauty Editor at mindbodygreen. She has a B.S. in journalism and a minor in women’s, gender, and queer studies from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Hannah has written across lifestyle sections including health, wellness, sustainability, personal development, and more.
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Women account for around 80% of all cases of autoimmune disease1. For lupus, the ratio of women to men is closer to 9:12. For multiple sclerosis, it's 3:13. The list goes on.

Ongoing research is looking into the root of these disproportionate statistics in the hopes of better understanding, treating, and preventing autoimmune diseases in the future. For now, it's all about gathering associations. Most recently, a bidirectional relationship between autoimmune disease and an often ignored form of depression has surfaced. Below, those findings.

The bidirectional association between ADs and perinatal depression

A study published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry found that women with autoimmune diseases had a 30% higher risk of subsequent perinatal depression4 and women exposed to prenatal depression had a 30% higher risk of developing a subsequent autoimmune disease.

What is perinatal depression?

According to the American Psychiatric Association, "Perinatal depression refers to depression occurring during pregnancy or after childbirth. The use of the term perinatal recognizes that depression associated with having a baby often begins during pregnancy. (Postpartum depression refers to depression experienced after childbirth.)"

This study focused on a cohort of Swedish women. Among this cohort, 55,000 women had perinatal depression. Forty-one subtypes of autoimmune diagnoses were also recorded.

The bidirectional association between autoimmune disease and depression was most pronounced among women who struggled with perinatal depression only, as opposed to those with compounding psychiatric concerns like anxiety, ADHD, etc. In addition, the association was strongest for multiple sclerosis compared to other autoimmune diseases.

It's important to remember that this is an association, not a causation. There seem to be a few different causes of both perinatal depression and autoimmune disease—with some overlap. If you made a Venn diagram for the causes of each condition, factors like increased stress and hormones would be in the middle.

With this finding, hopefully, physicians and women affected can be more aware of the increased risk of perinatal depression among women with autoimmune diseases and vice versa. For both of these health concerns, early detection can be incredibly powerful, so the more knowledge, the better.

Editor's note

When we refer to women in this article, we refer to those assigned female at birth. The health-related correlations are exclusive to hormonal and chromosomal differences, not gender identity or expression.

The takeaway

A new study found that women with autoimmune diseases had a 30% higher risk of subsequent perinatal depression and women exposed to prenatal depression had a 30% higher risk of developing a subsequent autoimmune disease. Hopefully, this knowledge will help women and physicians spot early signs of both health concerns to aid in treatment and progression prevention.

If you want to learn more about the research behind autoimmune diseases in women, check out this deep dive.

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