Abstract
Purpose
The association between perimenopausal depression and many chronic conditions among women has been well-established. However, the role of depression during perimenopause in the progression of multiple chronic conditions (multimorbidity) remains poorly understood.
Material and methods
A total of 1,216 community-dwelling women in their perimenopause period between 2010 and 2016 were enrolled in our analysis, and followed up for the progression of multimorbidity. Depression, as well as its severity, was evaluated by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression 10-item scale (CES-D-10). Progression of multimorbidity was defined as the first report of two or more chronic conditions for participants without multimorbidity or the new report of one or more conditions for those with multimorbidity. Univariable and multivariable Cox proportional hazards model and the restricted cubic spline regression model were performed to assess the prospective association between perimenopausal depression and the progression of multimorbidity.
Results
A total of 480 (39.5%) women reported depression during perimenopause, and 529 (43.5%) women progressed to multimorbidity. After adjusting for socio-demographic and lifestyle factors, perimenopausal depression was independently associated with the progression of multimorbidity (hazard ratio [HR]: 1.34; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.13 to 1.60). Moreover, the severity of depression was positively and linearly associated with the progression of multimorbidity (P < 0.05).
Conclusions
Our finding reveals a prospective association between perimenopausal depression and the progression of multimorbidity, indicating interventions targeting perimenopausal depression may reduce the burden of chronic diseases and multimorbidity in women’s post-menopausal life.
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Data Availability
All data used in this analysis are publicly available from the website of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS): http://charls.pku.edu.cn/en/.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the participants and staff of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) team for their valuable contributions.
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XX contributed the study conceptualization and supervised the project. BY and MC carried out the data analyses. BY wrote the initial draft of the manuscript, YZ, JT and CC revised the manuscript critically. All authors contributed to and have approved the final manuscript.
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Bingqi Ye and Yaguan Zhou contributed equally as co-first authors.
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Ye, B., Zhou, Y., Chen, M. et al. The association between depression during perimenopause and progression of chronic conditions and multimorbidity: results from a Chinese prospective cohort. Arch Womens Ment Health 26, 697–705 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-023-01354-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-023-01354-9