Scientists identify three patterns of PMDD symptoms — News-Medical
Researchers at Uppsala University have found that premenstrual dysphoric disorder can manifest in three different symptom patterns. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, involved 90 women with PMDD and 40 healthy control participants, News-Medical reports.
PMDD is a more severe form of premenstrual syndrome associated with the menstrual cycle. Its symptoms may appear shortly after ovulation and persist until menstruation begins. Over two months, participants kept diaries, assessing the severity of anxiety, depressive symptoms, irritability and mood swings.
Three course variants
An analysis of the daily records made it possible to track when individual symptoms emerged and subsided during the cycle. The scientists identified severe PMDD with early onset: symptoms in this group appeared about two weeks before menstruation and reached their greatest intensity around five days before it began.
The second variant was severe PMDD with late onset. In this course, symptoms began to intensify about ten days before menstruation, with the peak occurring at its onset. In the third group, which the researchers called moderate PMDD with late onset, symptoms also increased about ten days before menstruation, but became most pronounced around four days before it and were generally milder than in the other two groups.
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Interaction of symptoms
The study's author, Professor of Molecular Psychiatry Erika Comasco, noted that the same diagnosis does not mean the same course of the condition: in different people, symptoms may begin at different times and differ in intensity and timing of resolution. Different symptoms in one person may also develop according to different patterns.
The researchers also recorded a temporal association between the four most common symptoms. In particular, increased anxiety was followed by increased irritability, depressive manifestations and mood swings. At the same time, the scientists stressed that further research is needed to use these patterns to predict the course of PMDD in individual patients.
As the next stage, the team plans to study the biological mechanisms behind the different symptom patterns, their relationship with brain function and response to medication treatment.
