Diabetes and Depression
According to a story in the Boston Globe, diabetes and depression often go hand in hand, with the cause and effect remaining unclear to researchers.
On some level, it’s understandable. Diabetes brings a lot of lifestyle changes, and there are more subtle changes as well. I know I struggled with the idea that I was now suffering from a disease that I’d always associated with aging and bad living, and there are still days where it gets me down.
But because so many patients suffer from both diabetes and serious depression, scientists are now looking for common causes and also for indications that depression might actually predispose people to diabetes and not just the other way around. Researchers are beginning to test possible treatments that will address both conditions at the same time.
“Many diabetic patients are not being treated for depression or are not responding to antidepressants,” said Frans Pouwer, a senior researcher at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam. “We need improvements in treatment, and we need more studies to test the underlying mechanisms.”
Estimates suggest that up to 15 percent of diabetics suffer from major depression and 25 percent show depressive symptoms at some time, rates that are significantly higher that those in non-diabetics. Among the 21 million American diabetics, as many as 5 million also suffer from depressive symptoms.
At least one study, conducted at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and published in the journal Diabetes, found measurable differences in the brains of people with and without Type 1 diabetes, with the diabetic brains being less dense and less responsive in an area of the prefrontal cortex that helps control emotions and is believed to contribute to depression.
Other scientists are studying the stress hormone cortisol, which builds up in many depressives and which decreases the body’s production of insulin and reduces sensitivity to insulin’s effects.
Of course, there’s also the connection that having diabetes just plain sucks.
(via The Boston Globe)
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