Heart Disease, Depression in Diabetics Studied

People who have the type of diabetes that develops when they are young may keep their hearts healthy if they maintain normal blood pressure as well as an optimistic outlook, according to a new study.

Trevor J. Orchard, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health who led the 10-year study, said the strongest indicator of heart disease in the 658 participants was high blood pressure, which has long been established as a significant risk factor.

But depressive symptoms such as feeling down or disturbances in sleep or appetite also were more prevalent in study participants who developed heart disease.

“We’re not at the point yet where we can say treating depressive symptoms early can prevent heart disease,” Orchard said, “but we need to find out more about the mechanisms.”

The study will be published in January’s issue of the medical journal Atherosclerosis.

Alan M. Jacobson, senior vice president of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said Orchard’s findings contribute to a growing body of data linking depression to heart attacks and other outcomes of cardiovascular disease.

“The linkage raises interesting questions for future study and how we think about the nature of psychological problems and the outcomes of medical illnesses,” Jacobson said.

Orchard said the participants in the Pitt study were not clinically diagnosed as depressed. Rather, they filled out questionnaires as doctors monitored their health over a decade indicating whether they had depressive symptoms.

Moodiness or other symptoms may not have been severe enough to require psychiatric treatment, Orchard said.

“This opens up a nice new avenue for further exploration,” he said.

The study examined risk factors for coronary heart disease and arterial disease in the lower leg, both of which are common complications of Type I diabetes.

That type of diabetes often develops in children or young teens whose pancreases fail to secrete enough insulin to help the body use sugar and other carbohydrates. It is treated with insulin injections.

A second type of diabetes, Type II, usually develops later in life when the body stops responding to normal levels of insulin.