Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Anxiety Also Protects Against Accelerated Cellular Ageing
Source: Thailand Medical News Dec 19, 2019 4 years, 11 months, 4 days, 13 hours ago
CBT or
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for patients with social
anxiety not only helps to reduce
anxiety levels but also seems to protect against accelerated
cellular ageing, a study involving researchers at Karolinska Institutet published in the journal
Translational Psychiatry reports.
Lead author Dr Kristoffer Månsson, researcher at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden told
Thailand Medical News,"This is the first step towards better understanding the link between
cellular ageing and the treatment of psychiatric issues."
People affected by mental illness are at greater risk of developing somatic conditions, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, earlier in life than unaffected individuals. While the reasons for this are unclear, one possible contributory factor is that mental health disorders are associated with shorter telomeres and accelerated
cellular ageing.
Typically, telomeres are short sequences of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes and protect cells, not unlike the hard tips of shoelaces. The length of the telomeres decreases with every cell division, meaning that they grow shorter with age. The telomeres are in turn protected by the enzymes telomerase (the job of which is to rebuild them) and glutathione peroxidase (which protects the cells against oxidative stress).
The medical researchers behind the present study looked at the effect that
CBT has on these cell markers in patients with social
anxiety disorder (social phobia). Forty-six patients received nine weeks'
CBT treatment via the Internet, having first provided two blood samples with a nine-week interval. Fresh blood samples were then taken as soon as their treatment programme ended in order that the cell markers could be measured.
The study results showed that
CBT greatly reduced
anxiety levels in the patients while increasing the activity in the two protective enzymes telomerase and glutathione peroxidase, in direct relation to how much the patients improved.
Dr Kristoffer Månsson added, "In our interpretation, it means that effective psychological treatment for
anxiety can protect the cells against oxidative stress and
cellular ageing. This is an exciting result that can eventually allow patients to be given effective treatment based on their biological profile. But more studies are needed before we can draw any real conclusions about causality."
From the study, as expected, the length of the telomeres did not change during treatment, sin
ce it probably takes a longer time for such changes to take place. There was no change in telomere length, telomerase or glutathione peroxidise over the nine weeks before treatment commenced, which attests to the stability of the measurements. Control analyses also excluded such parameters as smoking, BMI and current medication as explanatory factors.
Reference : Kristoffer N. T. Månsson et al. Improvement in indices of cellular protection after psychological treatment for social anxiety disorder. Translational Psychiatry, online 19 December 2019, DOI: 10.1038/s41398-019-0668-2.
