The following is a summary of “Association between dietary sugar intake and depression in US adults: a cross-sectional study using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2011–2018,” published in the February 2024 issue of Psychiatry by Zhang et al.
Research investigating the relationship between dietary sugar intake and depression risk has yielded conflicting findings.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study utilizing data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database to investigate the link between dietary sugar intake and depression risk.
They conducted a cross-sectional analysis involving 18,439 adults (aged ≥ 20 years) from NHANES (2011–2018). The assessment of depressive symptoms utilized the nine-item version of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9).
Multivariate logistic regression analyses were utilized, adjusting for covariates including age, sex, race/ethnicity, poverty-income ratio, education, marital status, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, alcohol, smoking, physical activity, and dietary energy intake. Subgroup analyses and threshold saturation effect analyses were also conducted.
The results showed that following adjustment for potential confounders, a daily increase of 100 g in dietary sugar intake was associated with a 28% higher prevalence of depression (OR = 1.28, 95% CI = 1.17–1.40, P<0.001).
Investigators concluded that higher dietary sugar intake in US adults is linked to an increased risk of depression.
Source: bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-024-05531-7
