Social anxiety,depression and self-esteem in obese adolescent girls with Acanthosis Nigricans

Objective: to assess the impact of acanthosis nigricans (an) on depression symptoms,related quality of life and self-esteem scores in obese adolescent girls. methods: fifty-nine obese adolescent girls (mean age: 13.19±1.3 years,age range: 12-17 years,mean body mass index: 29.89±3.30) were enrolled in this study. the obese adolescent girls were divided into two groups based on presence or absence of an. non-obese healthy adolescents constituted the control group (30 girls,mean age: 13.5±1.4 years). all subjects were evaluated using the children’s depression inventory (cdi),the state-trait anxiety inventory for children (stai-c),and the modified rosenberg self-esteem scale (ses). higher scores indicated more severe depression and anxiety,as well as low self-esteem status. results: the an and non-an obese groups showed significantly higher cdi,stai-c and ses scores than the control group,and the two obese groups demonstrated no significant differences for these scores. the an obese group with higher total testosterone levels (>50 ng/dl) had higher scores for ses (2.55±1.8 vs. 1.42±1.2; p=0.03) than the an obese group with low total testosterone levels. ses scores significantly correlated with total testosterone levels (r=0.362; p=0.03) and fasting insulin (r=0.462; p=0.03) in the an obese group. conclusion: higher ses scores (low self-esteem status) were determined in obese adolescents with acanthosis and were related to hyperandrogenism. this study also showed that a high testosterone level may be one of the important indicators of low self-esteem status in obese girls with an. © journal of clinical research in pediatric endocrinology.