Senior diabetic patients with depression are at risk of early death, a study by the University of California Los Angeles suggests.
For the study, researchers examined data of 3,341 diabetic participants gathered from the Translating Research Into Action for Diabetes study that collected medical information through health insurance claims, medical chart and phone interviews.
The study covered 10 health plans from eight American states. Researchers noted that 1,402 of the participants were aged 65 and older whereas 1,939 participants were between the ages of 18 and 64.
In the beginning of the study, the participants were given a baseline interview. A follow-up survey was done after six to seven years. Following this, the researchers calculated the mortality risk of the participants.
The study findings showed that diabetic people with depression had 49 percent more chances of premature death compared to diabetic people without depression. The association was even stronger among the older participants.
Researchers said that seniors with diabetes and depression were 78 percent more likely to die early compared to diabetic seniors without the condition.
"We found that depression mainly increases the risk of mortality among older persons with diabetes," said study's lead author, Lindsay Kimbro, project director in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, reported in the press release. "Although depression is an important clinical problem for people of all ages, when you split the different age groups, depression in the younger group doesn't lead to increased mortality six to seven years later."
The study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
