Psychoactive Substance and Psychopathological Symptoms among Nigerian Secondary Schools Adolescents

Aim: This research aimed to determine the relationship between substance use disorder (SUD) and the biomarkers of inflammation: (C-reactive protein: CRP and Interleukin-6: IL-6) to investigate inflammatory reaction among SUD patients.

Study Design: This is a cross sectional comparative study.

Place and Duration of Study: This study was conducted at Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital (FNPH) Kaduna, North-western Nigeria which serve as a referral center for patients with psychiatric disorders from all the North Western states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja between August 2018 and August 2019.

Methodology: The study population was drawn from SUD patients who were positive to urine drug test. The serum CRP and IL-6 levels of 180 SUD patients (study group) were compared with the serum CRP and IL-6 levels of 180 apparently normal individuals who do not have history of substance abuse.

Results: The median and interquartile range of the ages of both the study group and the control group were 30 (23 – 40) and 33.5 (24-41) years respectively. The study population consist of 162 (90%) males and 18 (10%) females with median ages and range of 30.5 (15 – 72) and 26 (14 – 40) years respectively. A significant increase in IL-6 in SUD was observed (P = .0001) but no significant difference observed in CRP at 95% confidence interval (P = .73). It was observed that there was a strong positive relationship between IL-6 and CRP (r = 0.6646); P = .0001) in SUD patients.

Conclusion: IL-6 was significantly higher in people with SUD and as CRP levels increases IL-6 increases. This suggests that there is a level of inflammatory reaction in substance use disorder patients. Thus both serum CRP and IL-6 level can be considered as biomarkers of inflammation in patients with SUD.