Abstract
We reviewed the literature to investigate the relationship between depression and metabolic syndrome. Major depressive disorder is characterized by a low mood or a loss of interest for longer than two weeks. Metabolic syndrome describes multiple metabolic risk factors including obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, and hypertension. We divided our findings into environmental, genetic, epigenetic, and biological pathway links between depression and the different aspects of metabolic syndrome. We found various sources linking obesity and metabolic syndrome genetically, environmentally, biological pathway-wise, and, while not fully explored, epigenetically. Diabetes and depression were also found to be linked environmentally with both conditions increasing the risk of the other. Depression was also shown to be linked to cardiovascular complications as it increased the risk of occurrence of such complications in healthy people. These findings have led us to believe that there is a link between depression and metabolic syndrome on various levels, especially obesity.
Highlights
BackgroundDepression is a very common and complex disorder, which is more prevalent in women, and its causes are multifaceted [1]
In the USA, for the year 2000, the economic burden of depression was estimated at $83.1 billion, whereas in Europe, the annual cost of depression was €118 billion for the year 2004 [4]. It has been consistently associated with metabolic syndrome, which is an overarching term for obesity, cardiovascular complications, and diabetes [5]
We conducted a narrative review to investigate a link between depression and metabolic syndrome
Summary
Depression is a very common and complex disorder, which is more prevalent in women, and its causes are multifaceted [1]. Vancampfort et al conducted a meta-analysis to clarify the prevalence and correlates of metabolic syndrome in people with major depressive disorder In their sample size of 5,531 depressed individuals, 30.5% of them met the criteria for metabolic syndrome. When these individuals were compared with age- and gender-matched control groups, individuals with the major depressive disorder had a higher metabolic syndrome prevalence with an odds ratio of 1.54 [20] These findings were replicated in another meta-analysis done in 2015 by the same group in which they found that the pooled metabolic syndrome prevalence in people with severe mental illness was 32.6% (95% CI: 30.8-34.3%; N = 198; n = 52,678) [21]. This narrative review aims to present a comprehensive review of the literature regarding the relationship between depression and metabolic syndrome, with a specific focus on the shared epidemiology, environmental factors, biological pathways, and genetic factors of depression and obesity
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