Type 2 diabetes and sleep disorders together increase risk of developing depression

In a new study conducted by Ida KimWium-Andersen and team, it was found that individuals with both Type 2 diabetes (T2D) and sleep disorders had the highest relative risk of developing depression. The findings of this study were published in the Journal of Diabetes and its Complications.

Researchers in this study looked at the impact of co-occurring sleep disorders on the relationship between type 2 diabetes and the chance of developing incident depression.

The study population (N = 232,489) consisted of all people aged 40 with a T2D diagnosis documented in the Danish National Diabetes Register between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2012, together with a matched reference group. Using modified Cox proportional hazards regression, the risk of incident depression (diagnosis or antidepressant prescription) following T2D and the potential effect modification of concomitant sleep disturbance were calculated. The Danish National Patient Registry or the Danish National Prescription Registry classified a sleep disorder as a diagnosis of insomnia, hypersomnia, sleep-wake schedule problems, or usage of sleep medicine (z-drugs or melatonin).

The key findings of this study were as follow:

1. 15.3% of the patients had a sleep disturbance at the beginning of the trial.

2. During follow-up, 2.6% had a depression diagnosis, and 32.1% were given antidepressants.

3. Diabetes patients had an unadjusted hazard ratio (HR) for depression of 1.54, which was reduced to 1.50 (1.48-1.52) after adjusting for sleep disorders, and then further decreased to 1.27 (1.26-1.29), when the model was further modified to account for psychiatric and somatic comorbidities.

4. In the assessments of T2D and sleep disorder as independent and coupled variables compared with none of the conditions, the HR for T2D without sleep disorder was 1.27, for sleep disorders without T2D was 1.46, and for both conditions it was 1.49.

Reference:

Wium-Andersen, I. K., Jørgensen, T. S. H., Jørgensen, M. B., Osler, M., & Wium-Andersen, M. K. (2022). Diabetes, sleep disorders and risk of depression - A Danish register-based cohort study. In Journal of Diabetes and its Complications (p. 108266). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdiacomp.2022.108266