This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Depression linked with abdominal obesity

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Symptoms of depression may lead to increases in abdominal obesity, according to findings from the Health, Aging and Body Composition Study.

Researchers examined depressive symptoms and obesity in 2,088 adults aged 70 to 79 years. They used the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression score of 16 or higher to define baseline depression.

During five years of follow-up, the researchers observed an association between baseline depression score and increases in visceral fat (P=.001) and sagittal diameter (P=.01) after adjusting for sociodemographics, lifestyle, diseases and overall obesity. According to the study, the increase in abdominal obesity was independent of overall obesity.

“There may be specific pathophysiological mechanisms that link depression with visceral fat accumulation … these results might also help explain why depression increases the risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease,” the researchers wrote.

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008;65:1386-1393.