Increased levels of high-sensitivity CRP have been associated with e.g. major depression, chronic stress and obesity. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the association between generalized anxiety disorder and hsCRP.

The study sample consisted non-smoking women who were living in the town of Turku or nearby and had taken part in the longitudinal Health and Social Support Study (the HeSSup Study) in 1998 and 2003. Of these 312 women the address was unknown for 82, 230 were contacted and 153 subjects responded (67%), 18 (8%) refused to take part and 19 (8%) were excluded. All 116 participants signed and returned the informed consent. The MINI neuropsychiatric interview was used for diagnostics and blood samples were drawn for the analyses of hsCRP and cytokines.

The range mean of hsCRP-level was 1.7 mg/l (range: 0.17 -30.9 mg/l). The mean of BMI was 25.3 (SD=5.0, 17.3-50.8). There was an inverse correlation between GAD and BMI (rho= -0.19, p< 0.05). The odds for a person with GAD diagnosis to have high CRP was 0.37-fold (0.14-0.88), an increased IFN-G-1 0.74 -fold(0.61-0.90) an increased TNF-alfa 1.31-fold (1.01-1.71). Adding BMI to the multivariate analysis did not render the results insignificant.

We found a significant inverse correlation between immunity markers and GAD.