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Clinical Summary

Depressive and sleep symptoms may predict physical illness onset

Takeaway

  • Depressive symptoms and sleep problems, and a combination of both, were differentially associated with physical illness onset 6 years later in adults ≥50 years old.

Why this matters

  • There is no clarity as to what extent depression and sleep problems independently predict the onset of different physical illnesses.

Study design

  • Study used data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) (n=7395; age, 65.81±9.39 years; 54.8% female) to assess the combined effect of depressive symptoms and sleep problems for incident physical illness onset up to 6 years.
  • Depression symptoms were assessed using the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale and sleep using an adapted version of the Jenkins Sleep Problems questionnaire.
  • Funding: None disclosed.

Key results

  • In fully adjusted models, depressive symptoms were significantly related to an increased odds of coronary heart disease (CHD) (OR, 1.11; P=.002); however, sleep problems were marginally non-significant (OR, 1.15; P=.057).
  • In fully adjusted models, depressive symptoms were a significant predictor of incident diabetes/high blood glucose (OR, 1.13; P=.002) but sleep problems were not a significant predictor (OR, 0.99; P=.922).
  • Incident arthritis was predicted by both depressive symptoms (OR, 1.10; P=.002) and sleep problems (OR, 1.14; P=.019).
  • High depressive symptoms and high sleep problems were associated with an increased odds of incident cancer (OR, 1.67; P=.004).

Limitations

  • Self-reported data on physical illness.

References


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