Prospective associations between hand grip strength and subsequent depressive symptoms in men and women aged 50 years and older: insights from the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe

INTRODUCTION: In previous cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, depressive symptoms have been associated with lower hand grip strength (HGS), which is a convenient measure of overall muscular strength and serves as a marker of poor health. Most studies have considered low sample sizes or highly selective patient cohorts. METHODS: We studied the association between depressive symptoms (EURO-D) and HGS in three waves from the cross-national panel dataset Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Linear regressions and Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) were conducted to determine factors associated with depressive symptoms and investigate whether HGS predicts future depressive symptoms. RESULTS: Cross-sectional HGS explained 7.0% (Wave 4), 5.7% (Wave 5), and 6.4% (Wave 6) of the EURO-D variance. In the GEE, we analyzed people without depression in Wave 4 (N = 39,572). HGS predicted future EURO-D (B = −0.21, OR = 0.979, 95%CI (0.979, 0.980), p < 0.001) and remained a significant predictor of future depressive symptoms after adjustment for age, sex, psychosocial and physical covariates. DISCUSSION: Muscle strength is a known marker for physical health, but a relation with mental health has also been proposed previously. This study confirmed the link between HGS and depressive symptoms in men and women aged ≥50 years in a large longitudinal dataset. Further research is required to understand the mechanisms behind this link to determine whether HGS can serve as a specific marker of depressive symptomology, or whether they coexist due to common underlying disease processes.