Are diabetes and depression related? Fibroblast growth factors in depression

Abstract

According to the International Diabetes Federation (World Bank Group), the prevalence of diabetes in the adult South African population is 7.6%1 while the SASH study2 indicates the prevalence of depression in South Africa to be 9.7% with a lifetime prevalence of 16.6%. There is a bidirectional relationship between depression and diabetes, with the relative risk for diabetes being 1.6 in patients with depression, while the relative risk for depression is 1.2 in patients with diabetes (Figure 1). If controlled for all diabetes-specific risk factors, diabetes per se increases the risk of developing depression with 15%.3