Researchers from the Netherlands and the United States have shown that the presence of immunity to insulin increases the risk of developing a large depressive disorder. The article of scientists is published in The American Journal of Psychiatry.
The effect of insulin resistance – the immunity of tissues to the action of insulin – the risk of developing some dangerous disorders of the psyche has already been established. However, it was mainly done during simultaneous studies.
Scientists from Amsterdam free, Amsterdam, Rockefeller and Stanford universities were able to explore the health data of 600 participants of the Longitudinal (long-term) study of the causes and consequences of depression. At the time of the beginning of the observations, they were on average 41 years old and they did not have signs of depression or anxiety. The researchers measured three indicators of insulin resistance – blood glucose levels during starvation, waist girth and blood triglyciride ratio and high density lipoproteins (“good cholesterol”).
It turned out that a moderate increase in the latter was associated with an increased risk of new cases of a large depressive disorder by 89 percent. The growth of waist girth for five centimeters increased it by 11 percent, and an increase in glucose level of 18 milligrams – by 37 percent.
In addition, the researchers found out how the emergence of insulin resistance affects the development of depression. To do this, they selected 400 participants who, in the beginning of the study, in addition to depression, also not marked insulin resistance. Of the indicators are statistically – and clinically, the content of glucose in the blood was significant: in those people, who for the first two years of observations developed prediabet, the risk of developing a large depressive disorder across nine years after the start of the monitoring was more than 2.66 times.