Sexually Transmitted Pathogens, Depression, and Other Manifestations Associated with Premenstrual Syndrome

Abstract

This study investigated whether sexually transmitted infections and lifestyle variables are associated with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) as well as particular manifestations commonly associated with PMS. Data were gathered from medical records of 500 regularly cycling women. The following infectious agents were investigated: human papillomavirus, Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrheae, Gardnerella vaginalis, Candida albicans, and Trichomonas vaginalis. Bivariate tests and multivariate logistic regressions were used to evaluate whether these pathogens were associated with headache, pain, nausea, and depression. Chlamydia trachomatis was significantly associated with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and two common manifestations of PMS: depression and pain. Trichomonas vaginalis was significantly correlated with headache and Gardnerella vaginalis with nausea. None of the illness manifestations was significantly associated with the tested lifestyle variables: dietary calcium supplementation, alcohol and drug use, exercise, and smoking. These associations provide a basis for assessment of infectious causation of PMS and several manifestations of illness that are commonly associated with PMS.

Analysis of Nugent and Amsel Criteria for the Detection of Female Genital Tract Infections in a Tertiary Care Hospital, Coastal Karnataka

“…A study reported by Doyle C and their colleagues, Trichomonas vaginalis was significantly associated from premenstrual syndrome with headache. 26 However, some other studies have reported 4% 21 and 1.5% 27 Trichomoniasis from infectious women. In the present study, 5 (0.5%) Trichomoniasis was observed.…”

Do sexually transmitted infections exacerbate negative premenstrual symptoms? Insights from digital health

“…While the proximate causes of premenstrual inflammation might be well understood, i.e. falling levels of progesterone near the onset of the menses activate an inflammatory response, the ultimate reasons why there is variation in levels of inflammation between and within women has received little attention (but see [ 23 , 24 ]). In this paper, we investigate the possibility that negative premenstrual symptoms are exacerbated by the presence of a sexually transmitted infection using digital health data from Clue , a period-tracker app for smart phones.…”

“…This increased pathogen load would lead to the exacerbation of inflammatory symptoms pre-menstrually, when progesterone levels are falling. The hypothesis focuses on STIs because they are good candidates for chronic diseases: according to the virulence-transmission trade-off hypothesis [ 22 ], persistence within host is more likely to be favoured by natural selection when opportunities for transmission are infrequent, as is the case for STIs [ 23 ]. We find that, as predicted, some premenstrual symptoms are exacerbated by the presence of a STI among individuals who do not use hormonal contraceptives.…”

“…In a pioneering study, Doyle and colleagues investigated the link between sexually transmitted infections and depression and other PMSx, in particular headache, pain and nausea [ 23 ]. The study was based on medical records for 500 regularly cycling women, of which 120 were diagnosed with PMS (24%).…”

A Latent Variable Modelling Approach for The Pooled Analysis of Individual Participant Data on The Association between Depression and Chlamydia Infection in Adolescence and Young Adulthood in the UK

“…The particular substantive topic that we consider is to explore the predictive relationships between trajectories of depression during middle childhood, adolescence and early adulthood and acquisition of biologically confirmed current Chlamydia trachomatis infection, analysing for the first time relevant data of young people living in the UK. Despite the increased evidence of association between chlamydia infection and depression (Doyle et al ., ; Wang et al ., ) currently there is a paucity of research presenting limited scope and no robust evidence to understand the temporal nature of the relationship between these two diseases better. To our knowledge, only two studies have assessed to date the longitudinal relationship between depression and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among adolescents by using repeated measurements of depression based on US data (Khan et al ., ; Shrier et al ., ), without though distinguishing between Chlamydia trachomatis and other STIs and with the earlier of these studies using only self‐reported STIs (Shrier et al ., ) whereas the second (Khan et al ., ) has been faced with a long time gap between data collection in adolescence and young adulthood.…”