A study led by doctors at John Hopkins suggests diabetes and depression go hand in hand: Patients with depression have an increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes and patients with type 2 diabetes are at an increased risk for developing depression. Researchers studied an ethnically diverse group of 6,814 men and women to find out which condition occurs first in patients who end up with both diabetes and depression.
 
Results from the study showed those with elevated depressive symptoms were 42 percent more likely to develop diabetes than without those symptoms. Patients treated for diabetes were 54 percent more likely to develop elevated depressive symptoms than those without diabetes.
 
Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney disease.

This article originally appeared in the July 2008 issue of Kidney Beginnings: The Electronic Newsletter.