Investigation of Depression in Greek Patients with Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy

BACKGROUND: Considerable studies directly connect the complications in diabetic patients, and especially peripheral neuropathy, with the emergence of depression. Neuropathetic pain may deteriorate the general health status of the diabetic patient and glycaemic regulation. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the appearance and degree of diabetic peripheral neuropathy and its correlation with depression, with other parameters of the disease and also duration. METHODS: 57 diabetic patients participated with diagnosed diabetic peripheral neuropathy (male n=27, female n= 30, mean of age 72.7±6.35 years). The first part of Michigan Neuropathy Screening Instrument and the Zung Depression Rating Scale were used as tools for our study. Data was analysed with the SPSS 18.0 statistic program. RESULTS: 57.9% of the patients were overweight, 35.1% were obese and only 7% were within normal weight range. The BMI findings between the two genders indicate that male participants are more often obese than females. Women surpassed men in the category of overweight patients (p<0.05). The score based on MNSI was high and between 3 to 12 (mean average of 8.19±2.60 with 8 as intermediate rate). Almost 60% of patients had severe neuropathy, only 2 were found with mild symptoms and the rest had moderate neuropathtic symptoms, based on the score summary from the questionnaire. Investigating in detail the relation of diabetic neuropathy and depression, it derives that a high degree of diabetic neuropathy is related with high score of depression [F(3.160)=9.821, p=0.001]. Moderate and severe neuropathy was found with almost the same levels of depression. CONCLUSIONS: The correlation between diabetic neuropathy and depression is confirmed, while a very high depression rate was found in patients with severe neuropathy. The issue needs further study by using common instruments to obtain comparative results from the scientific community.