Young women with a history of depression are twice as likely to have the metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a combination of medical disorders that affect a large number of people in a clustered fashion. In some studies, the prevalence in the USA is calculated as being up to 25% of the population.
Men with a similar history do not suffer as frequently from the same symptoms, writes Leslie S. Kinder, Ph.D., of the Veterans’ Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
“Perhaps the health risks linked to depression are more critical to women,” Kinder says.
Kinder and colleagues looked at results of a national health survey conducted between 1988 and 1994, covering more than 6,000 men and women ages 17 to 39. Women were more likely than men to have experienced a prior episode of depression, and those women who had had at least one episode were also more likely to suffer from the metabolic syndrome.
People with the metabolic syndrome have at least three out of five factors linked to heart disease: high blood pressure; high triglycerides; low HDL (good) cholesterol; high fasting blood sugar; or abdominal obesity.
“Depression in women was associated with the number of the metabolic syndrome components present,” Kinder says, adding that the association between depression and high blood pressure was especially strong.
The relationship held even when the researchers controlled for age, race, education, smoking, physical inactivity, carbohydrate consumption and alcohol use. Depression in men was not associated with the metabolic syndrome or its components, she says.