Can Stress Lead to Autoimmune Disease?

The researchers who carried out the study looked through medical records of more than 100,000 Swedish adults who had been diagnosed with stress-related psychiatric disorders, the medical records of 126,652 siblings of these patients and 1.1 million unrelated individuals. The two latter groups had no stress-related disorders. Forty percent of those with stress-related psychiatric disorders were male and their average age, 41.

RESUIT:

Over a 10-year follow-up period, a significantly larger number of individuals who had a stress-related psychiatric disorder were diagnosed with an autoimmune disease compared to the other two groups. The autoimmune diseases included among others, Addison’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis (M.S.), Crohn’s and celiac disease. It is also noted that the risk for developing a particular disease is different from one another. For example, there was a higher risk for celiac disease than rheumatoid arthritis.