Original article
English
Majid Al –Mutter, Pratik Bakshi
College of Medicine, Al -Tahady University, Sirt, Libya
JMJ Vo1. 8 No.4 (Winter) 2008:284-287
Abstract
Low concentrations of serum cholesterol have been found to be prospectively associated with an increase in the risk of violent death or suicide. Biological mechanisms linking low serum cholesterol concentration and suicide have been hypothyzed. This study aims to find if there is any relation between low serum cholesterol level and suicidal behavior in females, such a relation may help in developing a biological marker that may improve the assessment of suicidal risk in the future. A total of 134 female patients were included in this study, 55 cases were defined as (suicidal) and those were cases who had been admitted to the ICU for attempting suicide by poisoning and cases admitted in the medical and surgical departments for attempting suicide by wrist cutting. Cases who were defined as nonsuicidal were 79 female patients who were admitted to the psychiatric unit as cases of depressive disorder with no history of suicidal attempts. Cases were divided to 4 age groups and serum cholesterol levels were estimated to every patient. Levels of serum cholesterol were divided to percentiles and in most of the suicidal patients the serum level of cholesterol falls below the 25th percentile in all of the 4 age groups ( most of them are of low serum cholesterol level). While in the non suicidal cases, levels of serum cholesterol fall above the 25th percentile in most of the cases in all the 4 age groups ( most of them were of high level of serum cholesterol). Results were analyzed statistically and we finally concluded that an inverse relationship was present between the level of serum cholesterol and suicidal risk which was statistically significant in two age groups (18-29) and (40-49) year old females. This relationship may become a helpful biological marker to predict the possibility of suicidal behavior in depressed patients in the future.
Keywords: Para suicide, Suicidal, Non-suicidal, Serum cholesterol, Depression, Violent death, Female, Biological marker.
Link/DOI: http://www.jmj.org.ly/PDF/winter2008/284.pdf