Many people who get type 2 diabetes will benefit from taking antidepressant medication, as it appears to reduce the symptoms of diabetes. That is a provisional result of research carried out by medical doctor and PhD student Christopher Rohde and published in Diabetologia.

The ultimate goal of the project is to see whether antidepressant medication protects against the development of conditions such as cardiovascular disease and cerebral thrombosis, and whether it increases longevity.

Christopher Rohde was very surprised at the results he has now published, which show, for example, that people who receive psychiatric drugs are better at managing their type 2 diabetes than those who don’t.

Christopher Rohde has an idea for an explanation. He believes that many people with type 2 diabetes are – very understandably – living in a state of sub-clinical depression, and that antidepressants lighten their mood, giving them more strength to cope with their treatment, take exercise, live more healthily and thus also achieve the weight loss that reduces diabetes symptoms.

Christopher Rohde’s patient group consists of newly diagnosed patients from  Central Denmark and North Jutland.

CONTACT
Christopher Rohde MD, PhD student
Aarhus University Hospital, Department of Public Health, Aarhus University
stofferrohde1@gmail.com
+45 28260990

Principal supervisor: Søren Dinesen Østergaard, Department for Depression and Anxiety Disorders, Aarhus University Department of Clinical Medicine

The article ‘The impact of hospital-diagnosed depression or use of antidepressants on treatment initiation, adherence and HbA1c/LDL target achievement in newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes’ was published in Diabetologia on 19 October 2020.

Grant received from Danish Diabetes Academy December 2019.
Project title: ‘The impact of treatment with antidepressants on the course of type 2 diabetes’.