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TOPLINE:

Depression was associated with having more physical health conditions at baseline, as well as faster development of additional conditions, in a new study.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers analyzed data for more than 172,500 participants (age at baseline, 40-71 years) from the UK Biobank cohort study.
• Overall, 69 long-term physical health conditions were ascertained through self-reporting, primary care, hospital admission, cancer registry, and death records at baseline (2006-2010) and during a mean follow-up period of 6.9 years.
• Participants with a history of depression (17.8%) were identified through primary care diagnoses (90.7%), hospital diagnoses (4.2%), or self-reported diagnoses (31.5%).

TAKEAWAY:

• Participants with a history of depression had more physical health conditions at baseline than those without depression (mean, 2.9 vs 2.1), and accrued additional physical health conditions at a faster rate (mean, 0.20 vs 0.16 conditions/year).
• After adjusting for age and sex, the rate ratio (RR) was 1.32 (95% CI, 1.31-1.34) for accrual of physical morbidities in participants with a history of depression compared to those without.
• The association remained significant after adjusting for all sociodemographic characteristics (RR, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.28-1.32) and further adjusting for baseline condition count and social/lifestyle factors (RR, 1.10; 95% CI, 1.09-1.12).

IN PRACTICE:

“Existing healthcare systems are largely designed to treat individual conditions, instead of individual people with multiple conditions,” the investigators wrote. “We need healthcare services to take an integrated approach to caring for people who have both depression (or other mental health conditions) and long-term physical health conditions.”

SOURCE:

The study was led by Kelly J. Fleetwood, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, the United Kingdom. It was published online on February 13 in PLOS Medicine.

LIMITATIONS:

The main study limitation was a healthy volunteer selection bias as only 5.5% of invited individuals participated in the UK Biobank baseline assessments. Participants were less likely to live in deprived areas and tended to have better health than the general population, which may have limited the generalizability of the findings. Some covariates may have overlapped with depression, possibly underestimating its impact. Missing data, mainly on the cholesterol, ie high-density lipoprotein ratio and A1c levels, were imputed. Additionally, this study did not assess specific physical conditions and depression severity, remission, and relapse.

DISCLOSURES:

The study was funded by the Medical Research Council/National Institute for Health and Care Research. The investigators reported no relevant conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.