Diabetes Links With Depression, Abnormal Sleep Duration

The study covered in this summary was published on medRxiv.org as a preprint that has not yet been peer reviewed.

Key Takeaways

Both short and long nightly sleep duration and the presence of depression increase the risk of diabetes.
The risk appears higher in men than women at all levels of depression and sleep.

Why This Matters

The finding that both short and long sleep durations link with a higher likelihood of diabetes confirms results from prior studies that documented a U-shaped relationship between sleep duration and diabetes risk.
The findings collectively suggest that an interrelated mechanism exists that associates both depression and sleep disturbance to diabetes.

Study Design

The authors produced estimates with statistical analyses that used diabetes diagnosis as the dependent variable in data from 21,229 adult women and men included in the 2018 National Health Interview Survey.
The sample included 11,369 women and 9860 men.

Key Results

Compared with 7–8 hours of self-reported sleep per night, both <7 hours/night and >8 hours/night sleep durations were significantly associated with a 40% to 60% higher probability of being diagnosed with diabetes.
Compared with never/rarely experiencing depression (self-reported), experiencing depression monthly was significantly associated with an 80% higher probability of a diabetes diagnosis, and having depression “often” was significantly linked with a 2.3-fold increased rate.
At each level of depression and sleep hours, diabetes probability was higher among men compared with women.
Two models that incorporated depression, sleep, sex, age, body mass index, physical activity, race, and income predicted the probability of diabetes with an area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve of 0.86, meaning that these variables collectively accounted for 86% of the association with diabetes.

Limitations

The study relied on self-reported measures.
Information on diabetes severity was not available.
The data were observational and cross-sectional, which precluded conclusions about causality.

Disclosures

The study received no commercial funding.
The authors have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

This is a summary of a preprint research study, “Sex Differences in Depression and Sleep Disturbance as Inter-Related Risk Factors of Diabetes,” written by researchers from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, and from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues, published on medRxiv, and provided to you by Medscape. It has not yet been peer reviewed. The full text of the study can be found on medRxiv.org.

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