People with diabetes are more likely to suffer from depression than people without the condition. In fact, their risk is about twice as high. Diabetes is a long-term illness that affects the body’s ability to manage blood sugar.
It can be hard to live with and often causes feelings of stress, worry, and frustration. These negative feelings can sometimes lead to depression.
And when people with diabetes are also depressed, it can make it harder for them to take care of their health, which can increase the risk of more serious problems and even shorten their life.
A group of researchers in Germany studied how inflammation in the body might affect how well depression treatments work in people with diabetes.
They came from the German Diabetes Center, the Research Institute of the Diabetes Academy Mergentheim, and the German Center for Diabetes Research. Their findings could help doctors better tailor depression treatments for people with different types of diabetes.
Inflammation is the body’s way of reacting to injuries or infections. But in some long-term conditions like diabetes and depression, the body can stay in a state of low-level inflammation for a long time. Previous studies have suggested that changes in inflammation might be linked to changes in depression symptoms.
In this new study, the researchers wanted to see if inflammation levels could predict how well people with diabetes respond to behavioral therapy for depression. They looked at 521 people with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes. These people were already part of three other studies that tested how effective therapy was in treating depression in people with diabetes.
To measure depression, the researchers used a standard questionnaire called the CES-D (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale). They also tested blood samples for 76 different markers of inflammation. Then they tracked changes in depression symptoms over the course of one year.
The results were interesting—and unexpected. For people with type 2 diabetes who had high levels of inflammation, therapy seemed to work very well. These patients showed big improvements in depression, especially in emotional symptoms like sadness and lack of joy.
But for people with type 1 diabetes who also had high inflammation, the therapy did not work as well. These patients showed only small improvements, mostly in physical symptoms like tiredness, sleep problems, and loss of appetite.
The reason why the same treatment works differently in type 1 and type 2 diabetes is not fully understood yet. One possible explanation is that the two types of diabetes involve different immune system problems.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, meaning the body attacks its own insulin-producing cells. Type 2 diabetes, on the other hand, is linked to obesity and causes inflammation related to metabolism.
The study’s authors believe these results could help doctors choose better treatments in the future. For example, people with type 2 diabetes and high inflammation might benefit most from behavioral therapy that helps change negative thoughts. People with type 1 diabetes and high inflammation might need anti-inflammatory medicine in addition to therapy.
More research is needed to fully understand these connections, but this study is a big step toward more personalized care for people with diabetes and depression.
If you care about diabetes, please read studies that pomace olive oil could help lower blood cholesterol, and honey could help control blood sugar.
For more information about health, please see recent studies that blueberries strongly benefit people with metabolic syndrome, and results showing eggs in a plant-based diet may benefit people with type 2 diabetes.
The study is published in Diabetologia.
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