TUESDAY, June 26 (HealthDay News) -- Insomnia and fatigue are hallmarks of primary biliary cirrhosis and primary sclerosing cholangitis, but depression does not account for the feelings of exhaustion experienced by these patients, who are no more likely to have depression than those in the general population, researchers report in the June issue of the Journal of Hepatology.
Walter van den Broek, M.D., Ph.D., of Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues studied 92 primary biliary cirrhosis and primary sclerosing cholangitis patients. Patients were screened with the Beck Depression Inventory and select patients (those with depression symptoms or selected at random) underwent an in-depth psychiatric interview.
While 42 percent of patients reported symptoms on the Beck Depression Inventory, only 3.7 percent were depressed according to DSM-IV criteria.
"The prevalence of a depressive disorder in patients with primary biliary cirrhosis and primary sclerosing cholangitis is not higher than in the general population," the authors write. "Fatigue in patients with primary biliary cirrhosis and primary sclerosing cholangitis cannot be explained by depression."
In an editorial, David E.J. Jones, Ph.D., of Newcastle University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, U.K., writes that "fatigue in primary biliary cirrhosis is not, it appears, a simple consequence of the presence of depressive illness." However, "fatigue, insomnia and concentration problems are a feature of primary biliary cirrhosis and primary sclerosing cholangitis."
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