Evaluation of Sleep Quality, Nutrition, Anxiety and Depression in Mastalgia

Mastalgia is encountered in 70% of premenopausal women and is one of the most frequent reasons for attending general surgery clinics. In most of the cases no physical cause is demonstrated and the etiopathogenesis is still not yet determined. In 1949 Patey, for the first time, proposed that mastalgia might be a psychologically based problem. In the following years, research was focused in this issue and some articles were published demonstrating the relationship of anxiety, depression and high stress levels with mastalgia. The efforts for finding out the etiopathologic mechanism and defining the risk factors revealed that smoking and consumption of tea, coffee and carbonated beverages in particular worsen mastalgia whereas essential fatty acids (especially gamma linoleic acid) provides a symptomatic relief. Additionally it is known that sleep irregularities cause serious deterioration in daily life quality as well as can exaggerate some medical, neurologic and/or psychiatric conditions. More than half of the population experience sleep irregularities from time to time and chronic sleep disturbances effect 20% of adult population in western countries. Therefore sleep irregularities might have contributing effects in the etiopathogenesis and/or symptomatology of therapy resistant conditions like mastalgia.

Inclusion criteria

• Having mastalgia as a presenting symptom (mastalgia group)
• Presence of mastalgia confirmed by a general surgeon (mastalgia group)
• Absence of mastalgia (control group)

Exclusion criteria

• Previously diagnosed breast carcinoma (both groups)
• Previously exposed to thoracic radiotherapy (both groups)
• Previous breast or thoracic surgery for any reason (both groups)
• Presence of Tietze syndrome (both groups)
• Use of nutritional supplements (both groups)
• Presence of any self-perceived pain (control group)
• Presence of psychogenic based conditions and psychosomatic illnesses (control group)