Association between visit-to-visit fasting glycemic variability and depression: a retrospective cohort study in a representative Korean population without diabetes

Glycemic variability (GV) is a risk factor for depression in patients with diabetes. However, whether it is also a predictor of incident depression in people without diabetes remains unclear. We aimed to investigate the association between visit-to-visit variability in fasting serum glucose (FSG) levels and the incidence of depression among Koreans without diabetes. This retrospective cohort study included data of people without diabetes who did not have depression at baseline and had at least three FSG measurements (n = 264,480) extracted from the 2002–2007 Korean National Health Insurance Service–National Health Screening Cohort. GV was calculated as the average successive variability of FSG. Among 264,480 participants, 198,267 were observed during 2008–2013 and their hazard ratios (HR) of incident depression were calculated. Participants with the highest GV showed a higher risk of depression in fully adjusted models than those with the lowest GV (HR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.02–1.16). The risk of incident depression heightened with increasing GV (p for trend < 0.001). Greater visit-to-visit GV may be associated with the risk of developing depression in people without diabetes. Conversely, maintaining steady FSG levels may reduce the risk of incident depression in people without diabetes.