On average, diabetics tend to suffer from depression at higher rates than is seen in the general population. A new study conducted by a team at the German Diabetes Center and other institutions in Germany has found that the markers of chronic inflammation influence how successful the treatments provided for depression will be for patients living with diabetes.
The study found that there are significant differences between the chronic inflammation biomarkers in people with Type 1 diabetes and those in people with Type 2 diabetes. The findings of this research could help to personalize the ways in which depression is treated in individuals with diabetes.
Why is depression of concern among diabetics? Depression occurs about twice as often among this group as in the general population. Additionally, depression can make it harder to treat diabetes, negatively affect life expectancy among diabetics, and elevate the likelihood of diabetics developing complications linked to their condition. It is therefore important to manage depression in people with diabetes so that the issues it presents in the lives of diabetics can be reduced or even eliminated.
Prior research found that when markers of inflammation in blood change, depressive symptoms tend to get worse or improve. Professor Christian Herder, the study’s first author, explains that it is therefore vital to identify the different factors linked to the successful treatment of depression among diabetics.
For their study, the team analyzed data taken from more than 520 individuals with either Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. They analyzed several inflammation markers, 76 in total, in the blood of the study subjects while also noting the different depression symptoms that the participants experienced.
The purpose of the study was to look into any possible links between levels of inflammation as depicted in the biomarkers seen in the blood, and how symptoms of depression varied in response to the changes in inflammation biomarkers. The study subjects were tracked for one year.
The data revealed that behavioral therapy produced better outcomes against depression in individuals that had higher levels of inflammation biomarkers in the Type 2 diabetes study participants. For subjects with Type 1 diabetes having higher levels of inflammation biomarkers, behavioral therapy only had modest beneficial effects on symptoms of depression.
It isn’t yet fully understood why the various correlations between markers of inflammation and the symptoms of depression differ so much among people with the different kinds of diabetes. It is posited that the immune system activates differently in those types of diabetes, that is, autoimmune processes play a major role for people having Type 1 diabetes while metabolic inflammation plays a big role in people with Type 2 diabetes.
What is now clear from this research is that inflammation is a major concern among diabetics having depression. Inflammation also plays a role in many other disease conditions, which is why it is important to make advances in the way the different manifestations of inflammation are treated. Companies like Soligenix Inc. (NASDAQ: SNGX) are spending considerable amounts of resources to address this need by commercializing effective treatments targeting inflammation.
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