Investigating the Relationship Between Mental Health and Common Allergic Diseases

Allergic diseases such as asthma, atopic dermatitis, and hay fever do not cause the onset of mental health conditions or vice versa, according to the findings of a new study published in the journal Clinical and Experimental Allergy.

Common mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression are some of the largest contributors to the global burden of disease and the prevalence of these allergic diseases has been increasing for some time.

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‘Establishing whether allergic disease causes mental health problems, or vice versa is important to ensure that resources and treatment strategies are targeted appropriately.’

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Though previous studies have reported an observational relationship between mental health and common allergic diseases, causal relationships had not been identified yet.

In this scenario, researchers from Population Health Sciences (PHS) and School of Psychological Science examined out whether allergic diseases cause mental health traits including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, or vice-versa.

First, they attempted to find the effects of common allergic diseases by applying a scientific technique called Mendelian Randomisation.

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This technique allowed them to identify genetic variants linked to these allergic diseases and then investigated how these variants were causally related to the presence of mental health conditions based on a sample of 12,000-344,901 individuals.

Researchers identified observational associations between allergic disease and mental health traits, but these were not replicated in the team’s causal analysis.

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This little evidence of a causal relationship between the onset of allergic disease and mental health suggests that the observational associations found were due to confounding or other forms of bias.

Intervening on the initial presentation of allergic disease is unlikely to improve mental health outcomes. Likewise, preventing the onset of mental health traits will unlikely reduce the risk of allergic disease.

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However, further research is required to investigate whether intervening in the progression of allergic disease after onset has any causal impact on mental health.

Source-Medindia