ST. LOUIS, May 8 (UPI) -- An anti-depressant drug may cut the risk of recurrent depression and increase the time between depressive episodes in diabetes patients, a U.S. study found.
Study leader Patrick J. Lustman of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis says although depression affects about 5 percent of the general population, the rate is about 25 percent for patients with diabetes.
Lustman teamed up with investigators at the University of Arizona in Tucson and the University of Washington in Seattle to study a total of 152 patients with diabetes at the three sites.
The sample included patients with type 2 diabetes and patients with juvenile, or type 1, diabetes, who averaged just over 50 years of age, and all had recovered from an episode of depression following treatment with sertraline, or Zoloft.
"As we better understand depression, it's clear that for many patients, it is a chronic and recurring disease," Lustman said. "That appears to be especially true for patients with diabetes compared to those otherwise free of medical illness."
The findings are published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
