Association between diabetes and depressive symptomatology among Hispanic Adults in Puerto Rico

Diabetes and depression are among the highest rate of morbidity and mortality. Studies demonstrate the association between depressive symptoms and the complications of the diabetes. This study aims to demonstrate the associations between diabetes and the depressive symptomatology (DS) in a group of adults (18-89 years). A cross sectional study was realized and the data was collected from endocrinology clinics in the rural north zone of Puerto Rico for the year 2011 (N= 238). The instrument used to measure the DS in the sample was the CES-D. Descriptive statistics were used to describe participants' profile. Bivaritate and multivariate analysis was made to compare data. The mean age for the sample was 56 years. Results shows that the academic degree (p < 0.001), anxiety (p< 0.001) and the level of income (p= 0.02) were correlated with DS. However, diabetes (p= 0.09) was marginally correlated with DS. It was also observed that type of health insurance (p= 0.36), sex (p= 0.49), age (p= 0.25) and Body Mass Index (BMI) (p= 1.00) weren't significantly associated with DS. After lineal regression, anxiety was the most significant predictor in the model after adjusting by age and income (p< 0.001, IC95%: 9.26, 19.53). In conclusion, among the participants the anxiety variable demonstrated to be a predictor of DS, as well as academic degree and income level. In contrast, with other populations reported in literature no other variable showed significant associations.