Cytokine profiles and diagnoses in elderly, hospitalized psychiatric patients (original) (raw)

There is a paucity of studies on inflammatory markers in elderly psychiatric patients. Hence, our study was undertaken to investigate cytokines as biomarkers in diagnostically unselected elderly patients admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Demographic data, clinical data and blood samples, including 27 cytokines, were collected from 98 patients above 60 years, consecutively admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Tromsø, Norway (69°N). The most common diagnosis was Recurrent depressive disorder (26.5%), the second most common was dementia in Alzheimer's disease (20.4%). The most frequent somatic disease was cardiovascular disease (28%). No statistical association (p < 0.01) was found between cytokines and gender, age, BMI, anti-inflammatory drugs, psychotropic drugs, reason for admittance, smoking, vitamin supplements, alcohol consumption, length of stay, somatic disease (present/not-present) or psychiatric diagnoses. However, when allocating patients to two groups, depression ...