Background: The incidence of depression in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is high and leads to a lower quality of life than that in undepressed SLE patients and healthy individuals. The causes of SLE depression are still unclear. Methods: A total of 94 SLE patients were involved in this study. A series of questionnaires (Hospital Depression Scale, Social Support Rate Scale and so on) were applied. Flow cytometry was used to test the different stages and types of T cells and B cells in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to explore the key contributors to depression in SLE. Support Vector Machine (SVM) learning was applied to form the prediction model. Results: Depressed SLE patients showed lower objective support, severer fatigue, worse sleep quality and higher percentages of ASC%PBMC, ASC%CD19+, MAIT, TEM%Th, TEMRA%Th, CD45RA+CD27-Th, TEMRA%CD8 than non-depressed patients. A learning-based SVM model combining objective and patient-reported variables showed that fatigue, objective support, ASC%CD19+, TEM%Th and TEMRA%CD8 were the main contributing factors to depression in SLE. With the SVM model, the weight of TEM%Th was 0.17, which is the highest among objective variables, and the weight of fatigue was 0.137, which was the highest among variables of patients’ reported outcomes. Conclusions: Both patient-reported factors and immunological factors could be involved in the occurrence and development of depression in SLE. Scientists can explore the mechanism of depression in SLE or other psychological diseases from the above perspective.
Background. The burden of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) is increasing substantially due to population growth and aging. Determining effective prevention and understanding the underlying mechanisms remain desirable pursuits for increasing the quality of life. As centenarians and their offspring may have genetic advantages, they may present with healthier cardiovascular-related profiles. Methods. We launched a cross-sectional household-based survey of centenarian families, including 253 centenarians, 217 centenarian offspring, and 116 offspring spouses without centenarian parents from county-level Chinese longevity city Rugao. Among offspring and offspring spouses were the following arrangements: 101 paired offspring and offspring spouses who lived together, 116 unpaired offspring, and 16 unpaired spouses. We investigated their cardiovascular-related health status including waist circumference, body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, and plasma lipids and compared results among centenarians, centenarian offspring, and offspring spouses. Results. Centenarians ranged from 99 to 109 years with a median age of 100 years. Centenarian offspring, with a median age of 70 years, and offspring spouses, with a median age of 69 years, shared similar age. Results of blood pressure, plasma lipid levels, and BMI displayed no significant difference between centenarian offspring and offspring spouses. However, centenarians appeared to have lower waist circumference, BMI, TC, LDL-C, TG, and diastolic blood pressure but higher levels of systolic blood pressure ( ). Multivariate analysis showed the prevalence of obesity, hypertension, and dyslipidemia was similar between centenarian offspring and offspring spouses, while centenarians appeared to have a lower prevalence of obesity and a higher prevalence of hypertension ( ). Conclusions. Centenarians and centenarian offspring did not present healthier BMI, blood pressure, or plasma lipids than offspring spouses. Further research on longevity and cardiovascular diseases are desirable.