A recent study by researchers from China and the UK suggests that depression may be a cause, rather than an effect, of menstrual pain. Published in the journal Briefings in Bioinformatics, the study reveals that depression can increase the likelihood of experiencing menstrual pain by up to 50 percent, highlighting the connection between mental and reproductive health.
"We used a specialised technique called Mendelian randomisation to analyse genetic variation and identify specific genes that may mediate (explain) the effect of depression on menstrual pain," said lead author Shuhe Liu, a PhD student at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China.
This technique analyzes genes to determine whether a specific risk factor can lead to a particular outcome, offering more reliable evidence than observational studies, which cannot establish cause-and-effect relationships. This approach is highlighted in a 2018 article published in the British Medical Journal by researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Bristol, UK.
Liu explained, "Our findings offer preliminary evidence that depression may be a cause, rather than a consequence, of dysmenorrhoea (menstrual pain), as we found no evidence suggesting that period pain increases the risk of depression." The researchers focused on disturbed sleep, a common symptom of depression, and identified it as a "significant mediator" or 'middleman' that helps explain the link between depression and period pain.
Approximately 6,00,000 cases from European populations and 8,000 from East Asian populations were analysed. The findings confirmed a significant causal effect of depression on dysmenorrhoea (by up to 50 per cent).