Prevalence, risk factors and prognostic value of anxiety and depression in recurrent glioma patients

Anxiety and depression are frequently noticed in glioma patients, while few studies report this issue in recurrent glioma patients. Hence, this study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of anxiety and depression, as well as their risk factors and prognostic value in recurrent glioma patients. Eighty recurrent glioma patients, 40 newly-diagnosed glioma patients, and 40 healthy controls were enrolled in this study. Then, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale for anxiety (HADS-A) and for depression (HADS-D) were used to assess the anxiety and depression status of all subjects. The HADS-A score (8.6 +/- 3.3 vs. 7.0 +/- 2.9 vs. 4.3 +/- 2.5), anxiety rate (58.8% vs. 32.5% vs. 10.0%), HADS-D score (7.9 +/- 3.0 vs. 6.9 +/- 3.1 vs. 4.0 +/- 2.6), and depression rate (45.0% vs. 30.0% vs. 7.5%) were all highest in recurrent glioma patients, followed by newly-diagnosed glioma patients, and were lowest in healthy controls (all P < 0.001). Furthermore, female sex (vs. male sex) was independently correlated with anxiety (odds ratio (OR): 3.042, P = 0.029); meanwhile, higher World Health Organization (WHO) pathological grade was independently correlated with depression (OR: 2.573, P = 0.019) in recurrent glioma patients. Additionally, anxiety was correlated with shortened progression-free survival (PFS) (P = 0.028) and overall survival (OS) (P = 0.047), while depression only had a correlation trend with shortened PFS (without statistical significance) (P = 0.069) and was associated with shortened OS (P = 0.035) in recurrent glioma patients. The prevalence of anxiety and depression is high in recurrent glioma patients, which relates to gender, WHO pathological grade, and estimates worsen survival.