Associations between serum lipid levels and suicidal ideation among Korean older people

Are Lipids Possible Markers of Suicide Behaviors?

“…It is well known that low levels of cholesterol, triglycerides, and LDL are beneficial in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases. However, some studies presented in our review may indicate that low lipid values may be associated with a higher risk of suicide attempts [6,42,52,58].…”

“…Many researchers [6,18,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61] have attempted to identify biological markers that could be linked to suicidal behavior and potentially be used as additional preventive factors. Some of them tried to find the link between cytokines, such as TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6 and suicide [59,60]; others measured plasma phospholipid levels of arachidonic acid (AA%), docosahexaenoic acid (DHA%) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA%) [61].…”

“…Levels of thyroid thyroxine (T4), triiodothyronine (T3), thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), prolactin, and cortisol were also measured [51]. Other researchers [6,18,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59] have focused on the correlation between plasma or serum lipid levels and suicide but, unfortunately, inconsistent results have been reported. Both an increase and a decrease in lipid levels were observed.…”

“…Shin et al conducted a study that used data obtained from a representative Korean sample of 4265 people aged 65 years or older. They found that lower triglyceride levels were correlated with a decreased risk of suicidal ideation among males (OR = 0.65; 95% CI = 0.43-0.99) but not among females [58].…”

Increased TG/HDL‐C in female G allele carriers of rs1061622 at gene of tumour necrosis factor receptor 2 with suicidal ideation

“…with the recent suicide status in the same study population. 2 Moreover, a positive association between triglyceride (TG) and suicidal ideation risk was found among men in a Korean older population 3 and in Taiwanese adults at 20 years of age or older. 4 However, significant decreases of serum TG levels were also observed in the subjects who had attempted suicide within one month compared with the lifetime and never attempters, 2 as well as in the levels of other serum lipids including total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and VLDL-C in suicide attempters compared with those without suicidal behaviour.…”