Biomedical subjects

Huseyin Gulec

Publications and source records attributed to Huseyin Gulec.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Alexithymia and anger in patients with fibromyalgia.

Our objective was to delineate the relevance of the personality construct alexithymia and anger-in in patients with fibromyalgia syndrome. Fifty subjects with fibromyalgia syndrome were compared to 20 subjects with rheumatoid arthritis and 42 healthy controls on the measures of anxiety, depression, anger, alexithymia, pain intensity and disability. There was a significant difference on the measures of anxiety and anger between FMS and RA groups, and also between FMS patients and healthy controls. There was a significant difference between FMS patients and healthy controls on the measures of depression, difficulty in identifying feelings subscale of TAS (TAS-dif), and total alexithymia scores. When the severity of pain was controlled for, there was a significant difference on the measures of anger and alexithymia between the FMS and the RA groups. Fibromyalgia patients were more alexithymic than rheumatoid arthritis patients even when the level of depression was controlled for. Anger towards oneself, which is anger-in, was higher in patients with fibromyalgia patients than in the rheumatoid arthritis sample. A stepwise regression model showed that the anger-out scores and the anxiety scores predicted the level of pain severity, and this explained 32% of the variance in the fibromyalgia syndrome group. Although anger-in is consistently higher in fibromyalgia patients, it is the behavioral expression of anger, together with anxiety, that predicts the severity of the pain. The difficulty of identifying feelings, rather than other dimensions of alexithymia, seems to be associated with fibromyalgia.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Affective distress and fibromyalgia.

PRINCIPLES: Elevated rates of lifetime and current psychiatric disorders, elevations of psychological self-report measures assessing depression, anxiety and hypochondriasis have been reported in fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) patients as well as studies refuting these findings. Studies comparing FMS patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients provide discrepant data. The aim of this paper is to compare FMS patients with RA patients and healthy controls with respect to psychological measures in a case control design. METHODS: Fifty subjects with FMS, 20 with RA and 42 healthy controls were assessed with respect to anxiety, depression, pain intensity and disability. Three logistical regression models were performed to test whether higher levels of a psychological measure (disability, depression or anxiety) are associated with one disease rather than another, or with one disease rather than with healthy controls. For each regression model, the best exploratory covariates were determined using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. RESULTS: In the logistic regression, anxiety scores were the most important covariate determining the likelihood of having FMS whereas depression scores increased the chances of being an RA patient. Age and disability scores did not differ between FMS and RA. CONCLUSIONS: Affective distress is not specific to FMS patients, but the manner in which affective distress is incorporated into the patient's life is worth studying. FMS.seems to be associated with anxiety rather than depression.

Aged↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Does somatosensory amplification decrease with antidepressant treatment?

Somatosensory amplification refers to a tendency to experience somatic and visceral sensations as unusually intense, noxious, and disturbing. The authors wanted to determine whether somatosensory amplification is a stable construct or whether it might change with antidepressant therapy. Fifteen patients with fibromyalgia and 17 patients with major depressive disorder received antidepressant treatment and were assessed after 6 and 12 weeks of treatment. Amplification scores responded to antidepressant treatment in patients with major depression but not in patients with fibromyalgia, despite a decrease in the levels of depression in both groups. When change in depression and anxiety scores was partialled out from change in somatosensory amplification scores, the amplification scores did not change significantly in either the depressed or the fibromyalgia groups. Given the small numbers and the marginal significance of the results, the authors are unable to say definitely just how independent of depression somatosensory amplification is. Whether somatosensory amplification is a measure of depression per se should be tested in a more definitive and larger future study.

Adult↗