Depression, Daily Stressors, and Inflammatory Responses to High-Fat Meals: When Stress Overrides Healthier Food Choices

Depression, stress, and diet can all alter inflammation. This double-blind, randomized crossover study addressed the impact of daily stressors and a history of major depressive disorder (MDD) on inflammatory responses to high-fat meals. During two separate 9.5 hour admissions, 58 healthy women (38 breast cancer survivors and 20 demographically-similar controls), mean age 53.1 years, received either a high saturated fat meal or a high oleic sunflower oil meal. The Daily Inventory of Stressful Events assessed prior day stressors and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV evaluated MDD. As expected, for a woman with no prior day stressors, C-reactive protein (CRP), serum amyloid A (SAA), intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1), and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (sVCAM-1) were higher following the saturated fat meal than the high oleic sunflower oil meal after controlling for pre-meal measures, age, trunk fat, and physical activity. But if a woman had prior day stressors, these meal-related differences disappeared – because the stressors heightened CRP, SAA, sICAM-1, and sVCAM-1 responses to the sunflower oil meal, making it look more like the responses to the saturated fat meal. In addition, women with an MDD history had higher post-meal blood pressure responses than those without a similar history. These data show how recent stressors and an MDD history can reverberate through metabolic alterations, promoting inflammatory and atherogenic responses.