Diabetes linked to postpartum depression

BOSTON, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Low-income women with diabetes have a more than 50 percent increased risk of experiencing postpartum depression, U.S. researchers said.

"While previous studies have linked diabetes and depression in the general population, this is the first time, to our knowledge, that the relationship has been studied specifically in pregnant women and new mothers," Katy Backes Kozhimannil of the Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care said in a statement. "We believe these findings may help clinicians better identify and treat depression in new mothers."

Kozhimannil and Bernard Harlow of the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health examined medical claims data from the New Jersey Medicaid program, looking at information from 11,024 new mothers who had given birth from July 2004 to September 2006. They had incomes less than 115 percent of the federal poverty line -- $24,000 for a family of four in 2006.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, said the data indicated that 9.6 percent of women with diabetes, who had no indication of depression during pregnancy, developed depression during the year following delivery, compared with 5.9 percent of women without diabetes -- or pregnant women and new mothers with diabetes were approximately 55 percent to 60 percent more likely to experience postpartum depression.

However, the researchers caution that these findings do not establish that diabetes causes postpartum depression, only that the two are related.