Associations between stressful life events and diabetes: findings from China Kadoorie Biobank study of 0.5 million adults.
Wang M., Gong W-W., Hu R-Y., Pan J., Lv J., Guo Y., Zheng B., Chen Z-M., Li L-M., Zhong J-M.
AIMS: Evidence has indicated that stressful life events are associated with development of diabetes, yet studies in mainland China are scarce. In this study, we explored the associations between the cumulative and specific stressful life events and prevalence of diabetes in Chinese adults. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The cross-sectional data were from the China Kadoorie Biobank study, which enrolled approximately 0.5 million adults aged 30-79 years from 10 diverse regions of China. Logistic regression models were used to calculate the adjusted odds ratio (OR) and the 95% confidence interval (CI). RESULTS: Of the 473,607 participants, 25,301 (5.34%) had type 2 diabetes (T2DM, 2.68% clinically-identified and 2.66% screen-detected). Participants who experienced one and two or more stressful life events were 1.10-fold (OR: 1.10, 95% CI: 1.05-1.16) and 1.33-fold (OR: 1.33, 95% CI: 1.13-1.57) more likely to have T2DM. Three categories of work-related events (OR: 1.15, 95% CI: 1.01-1.31), as well as family-related events (OR: 1.11, 95% CI: 1.06-1.18) and personal-related events (OR: 1.18, 95% CI: 1.03-1.36) were associated with increased likelihood of T2DM. Regarding the specific life events, the ORs of loss of job or retirement, as well as major conflict within family, death or major illness of other close family member and major injury or traffic accident were1.24 (95% CI: 1.02-1.52), 1.24 (95% CI: 1.08-1.43), 1.13 (95% CI: 1.06-1.20) and 1.20 (95% CI: 1.01-1.43), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The present study indicated that the cumulative and specific stressful life events were significantly associated with increased prevalence of diabetes. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.