Sjögren’s syndrome increased risk of attempted suicide

Sjögren’s syndrome, a chronic autoimmune disorder, markedly impairs health-related quality of life, sometimes to levels perceived as worse than death. This significant decline prompts concerns about mental health outcomes, including the risk of suicide. The present study investigates whether individuals with Sjögren’s syndrome is associated with an increased risk of attempted suicide than those without the condition. Utilizing data from the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2010, we conducted a retrospective cohort study involving 20,685 patients diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome and a comparison cohort of 103,425 propensity-score matched individuals without the syndrome. We examined the one-year suicide attempt-free survival using the log-rank test and employed Cox proportional hazards regression to assess the risk of attempted suicide post-diagnosis after taking soico-demographic and clinical variables into considerations. Within the 124,110 sampled patients, the incidence rates of attempted suicide were statistically and significantly higher in the Sjögren’s syndrome cohort during the one-year follow-up: 0.247 per 100 person-years (95% CI = 0.186–0.322) compared to 0.014 per 100 person-years (95% CI = 0.008–0.022) in the comparison cohort. The adjusted hazard ratio for attempted suicide was markedly elevated at 18.054 (95% CI = 9.992–32.623) in the study cohort than the comparison group. The findings reveal a profoundly increased risk of attempted suicide on patients with Sjögren’s syndrome. This underscores the need for enhanced psychiatric evaluation and intervention strategies within this vulnerable population to address the elevated suicide risk effectively.