Inflammation as a Mediator of Depression and Diabetes in the Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE)

Presenter(s): Allison Dona − General Science, Spanish

Faculty Mentor(s): Josh Snodgrass, Alicia DeLouize

Poster 62

Research Area: Natural Science

Funding: NIH NIA Interagency Agreement; Ministry of Health in Mexico; University of Oregon Bray Fellowship

Diabetes and depression are major global health concerns, affecting over 400 million and 300 million worldwide, respectively. Numerous studies have found that these diseases are commonly comorbid, suggesting the possibility of an underlying shared physiological process such as an inflammatory pathway. As a biomarker of inflammation, C-reactive protein (CRP) has not been consistently linked to these conditions, despite the fact that diabetes and depression have both been linked to inflammatory mechanisms. This study uses Mexico Wave 1 data from the Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE) to examine if CRP mediates the relationship between depression and diabetes risk. It is hypothesized that, in participants 50-plus, inflammation will mediate the effect between the two conditions. Depression was estimated using a behavior-based diagnostic algorithm, inflammation was assessed using dried blood spot (DBS) CRP, and diabetes risk was assessed using DBS glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c). The association between depression and diabetes risk was partially mediated by inflammation. The presence of depression is associated with increased CRP, which is associated with increased HbA1c. This suggests that inflammation may be associated with the comorbidity of depression and diabetes. This may be the first study to use a large sample of older adults in a middle-income nation with high-resolution biomarker information to investigate physiological processes that might be involved in both conditions, an understanding of which could lead to better treatments.

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