Insulin resistance and depression: cross sectional study

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Abstract
We invited all 1008 people born in 1935 and living in the city of Oulu, Finland, on 1 October 1990 to participate in a study to assess the prevalence of type 2 diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance; 831 attended. The follow up of the earlier participants, on which this study was based (n = 593), was done in 1996-1998; we excluded patients previously diagnosed as having diabetes, leaving 491 cases. A detailed description of the data was given earlier.4 We defined insulin resistance with the qualitative insulin sensitivity check index,4 and we evaluated the severity of depressive symptoms with Beck's depression inventory 21.5 We found a negative correlation between the scores (Spearman correlation coefficient r = −0.13, P = 0.004). The correlation (see figure on bmj.com) was most evident in subjects with impaired glucose tolerance (r = −0.24, P = 0.029; table). Regarding different levels of disturbed glucose metabolism, patients with type 2 diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance had higher depression scores (median 6.0 and 6.0) than those with normal glucose tolerance (5.0); the difference was statistically significant between impaired and normal glucose tolerance groups (table).