Around the world, rates of diabetes are on the rise. The disease ismarked by high blood sugar that, over the long term, negatively affectsother parts of the body - especially the kidneys, heart and eyes. Someresearch has also noted that people with diabetes are almost twice aslikely to also have symptoms of depression. Rose Hoban has more on that.
DoctorSherita Hill Golden from the Johns Hopkins University was interested inseeing if having diabetes can lead to developing depression, or whetherbeing depressed makes it more likely a person will develop diabetes.She used data from a large study that included more than 5000 people.
Inthe first analysis, she and her colleagues examined whether havingelevated symptoms of depression led to type 2 diabetes. They excludedpeople who already had diabetes and looked for people who did anddidn't have symptoms of depression.
"We found that people whohad elevated symptoms of depression were 42% more likely to developtype 2 diabetes over follow-up," she reports.
Then Golden lookedat people who were being treated for diabetes to see if they were morelikely to develop depression. "The people who had treated diabetes were52% more likely to develop symptoms of depression over follow-up in ourstudy," she says. "But interestingly, people who had pre-diabetes anduntreated diabetes were about 20% less likely to develop symptoms ofdepression."
Golden says she found it interesting that peoplewho had diabetes - but didn't know it - were less likely to bedepressed. She proposes that the reason for the link between diabetesand depression is more emotional than physiological.
"Peoplewho are taking medications for diabetes may also have to monitor theirsugar and health behaviors much more intensely than people who don'tcarry a diagnosis," she observes. "And so just the burden of themonitoring may lead to risk of depressive symptoms."
Goldensays patients with depression had worse health behaviors: they smokedmore, they ate more, they weighed more and they exercised less. Allthose behaviors contribute to developing diabetes. She also suggeststhere might be some connections between increased stress hormones inpeople with depression and the development of diabetes. Golden saysthat will be an area for further study.
Her research is published in JAMA - the .
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