THURSDAY, Dec. 8 (HealthDay News) -- Patients with diabetes who have comorbid depression have an increased risk for the development of dementia, compared to those with diabetes alone, according to a study published online Dec. 5 in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
Wayne Katon, M.D., from the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues investigated whether patients with type 2 diabetes who have comorbid depression have an increased risk of dementia development. A random sample of 19,239 patients with type 2 diabetes, aged 30 to 75 years, from the Diabetes and Aging Study were surveyed to identify prevalent cases of depression. Dementia diagnoses (based on International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision-clinical modification [ICD-9-CM] criteria) were identified three to five years post-baseline to ensure that depression was not a prodrome of dementia. Cox proportional hazard regression models that adjusted for sociodemographic, clinical, and health risk factors and health use, were used to estimate risk of dementia for patients with depression and diabetes, relative to patients with diabetes alone.
The investigators found that during the three- to five-year post-baseline period, one or more ICD-9-CM diagnosis of dementia occurred in 2.1 percent of 3,766 patients with diabetes and comorbid depression, and in 1.0 percent of the 15,473 patients with diabetes alone (incidence rate of 5.5 and 2.6 per 1,000 person-years, respectively). A 100 percent increased risk of dementia was seen in patients with comorbid depression during this period (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.02).
"Depression in patients with diabetes was associated with a substantively increased risk for development of dementia compared with those with diabetes alone," the authors write.
One of the study authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Abstract
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