Chronic prostatitis and depressive disorder: A three year population-based study

Background: There is limited research on the relationship between chronic prostatitis (CP) and the subsequent risk of depressive disorders (DD). This population-based study aims to prospectively examine the relationship between a history of CP and the risk of developing DD in Taiwan. Methods: A total of 3051 adult patients, newly diagnosed with CP during 2001 to 2005, were recruited, together with 15,255 matched enrollees without a history of CP as a comparison cohort. All patients were tracked for a three year period from their index healthcare encounters to identify those who had subsequent DD. The Cox proportional hazards models were carried out to compute the risk of DD in the study and comparison cohorts, after adjustment for socio-demographic characteristics. Results: Of a total of 18,306 patients, 163 (5.34%) from the CP group and 494 (3.24%) from the comparison group had a subsequent diagnosis of DD during the follow-up period. Stratified Cox proportional analysis shows that, after adjusting for monthly income, geographic region, and urbanization level of the community in which the patient resided, hypertrophy (benign) of prostate, and urinary incontinence, the hazard ratio of DD during the three year follow-up period is 1.63 for patients with chronic prostatitis (95% CI = 1.36-1.96) than those without chronic prostatitis. The differences are most significant in the younger group, aged less than 30 years (hazard ratio, 2.50; 95% CI = 1.18-4.51). Conclusions: These results suggest that CP patients experience an increased risk of DD compared to non-CP patients during a three year follow-up period.