Anxiety, PTSD tied to lower anti-Müllerian hormone levels in women firefighters
Key takeaways:
- Women firefighters with a history of anxiety or PTSD had lower serum anti-Müllerian hormone levels.
- Depression was not associated with anti-Müllerian hormone levels.
Women firefighters reporting a history of clinically diagnosed anxiety or PTSD were more likely to have lower anti-Müllerian hormone levels, potentially impacting reproductive health, researchers reported in the Journal of Women’s Health.
“Mental health conditions, notably anxiety and PTSD, can have a negative impact on reproductive health,” Michelle Andrea Valenti, MPH, a doctoral candidate in the department of epidemiology at the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, told Healio. “These findings suggest one potential mechanism in which mental health conditions can lead to adverse reproductive outcomes. The magnitude of effect that we found for PTSD is quite large.”
Valenti and colleagues used data from 372 women firefighters (mean age, 33 years; 60.5% white) from the Fire Fighter Cancer Cohort Study. Researchers collected participant demographics, reproductive history and self-reported anxiety, depression and PTSD clinical diagnoses and assessed anti-Müllerian hormone levels.
Primary outcome was the association between anxiety, depression and PTSD and anti-Müllerian hormone levels when adjusted for age and BMI.
Overall, 15% of women firefighters reported a depression diagnosis, 18.2% an anxiety diagnosis and 8.7% a PTSD diagnosis.
Compared with women firefighters without a mental health diagnosis, those with a history of self-reported anxiety had 33% lower serum anti-Müllerian hormone levels while those with PTSD had 66% lower levels. The association between anxiety and anti-Müllerian hormone levels was not significant when excluding women firefighters with concurrent PTSD.
In analyses stratified by age, women firefighters younger than 35 years had a reduced association between anxiety, depression or PTSD diagnoses and anti-Müllerian hormone levels while those aged 35 years or older had a more pronounced association for all three diagnoses.
Women firefighters with vs. without self-reported depression had lower anti-Müllerian hormone levels, but this association was nonsignificant.
“Moving forward, we need more collaborative research that identifies not only exposures that can be harmful to reproduction but also potential interventions that can mitigate these exposures,” Valenti told Healio.
For more information:
Michelle Andrea Valenti, MPH, can be reached at michellevalenti@arizona.edu.