Results of a new study provide more evidence that being depressed increases the likelihood of developing diabetes.

People, as well as their doctors, “should recognize that depressive symptoms can increase risk of diabetes and are related to higher levels of insulin resistance, which is a risk factor for diabetes,” investigators write in the medical journal Diabetes Care.

“Patients should be encouraged to seek treatment for clinically significant depressive symptoms and to maintain or adopt active lifestyles, healthy diets, and weight loss if needed to reduce the risk of diabetes,” they add.

Dr. Susan A. Everson-Rose, from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, and associates analyzed data on Depression and risk of diabetes in 2,662 women enrolled in a study of health and aging.

The team found that that Depression was linked to higher insulin-resistance values and the onset of diabetes.

These associations, they emphasize, resulted largely from abdominal obesity. Once the calculations were adjusted for “central adiposity,” depression no longer predicted insulin resistance and diabetes - except among African-American women.

African-American women with depression were at increased risk of diabetes “independent of central adiposity and other risk factors,” according to the investigators.

The occurrence of diabetes was highest in African-American women in the 3 years of follow-up and was more than twice that of white women. This suggests to the team that factors other than abdominal fat deposits may contribute to the excess risk of diabetes in African-American women.

SOURCE: Diabetes Care, December 2004.