Associations Between Diet And Depression In The Chinese Population

Background Depression is a common disease in the world.According to the 2012 report of the World Health Organization,depression is the fourth major cause of the burden of disease.And it will be the second cause by the year 2020.Given the negative consequences it brought on society and the increasing prevalence of depression,identifying modifiable risk factors for depression is inevitably warranted to prevent or delay it.Over the past decades,many epidemiological studies have demonstrated an important role of diet in treatment and prevention of depression.These studies focused on the associations of depression with individual nutrients such as folate,n-3 fatty acids,magnesium,zinc and other B vitamins or specific food groups including fish,fruits and vegetables.However,Instead of consuming individual nutrients or food groups,people consume combined food on their daily basis,which can possibly interact with one another.Thus,it remains difficult to attribute differential disease prevalence or symptomatology to a single nutrient or food group.Whereas a growing body of evidence has recently emerged in examining the associations between dietary patterns and depression,there is conflicting results in terms of diet with depression.Given the inconsistent results of dietary patterns with depression and the lack of evidence elucidating the relationship in the Chinese population,our aim was to study the role of diet with respect to depression in Chinese with adjusting for important factors associated with depression including sleeping habit.Method Data from 5119 participants aged 18–80 years were analyzed.The principal analysis was used in the assessment of dietary intake.Depression was evaluated by using the WHO-Five Well-being Index(WHO-5).Multiple logistic regression method was used to evaluate the correlation between diet and depression.Results The first component represented a high intake of freshwater products and low intakes of all the other food groups.The second component was characterized by frequent consumption of red meat,poultry,sweetened drinks.The third component was loaded by high intakes of rice,dark vegetables and light vegetables.In the fourth component,porridge was dominant constituent with relatively low in all the other food groups.Flour food and Chinese liquor were two key constituents in the fifth component.For many important confounding factors(age,sex,educational level,physical activity, body mass index,total energy intake,smoking status,drinking status,tea drinking,coffee drinking,sleep duration,diabetes and hypertension),participants in the highest tertile of the second component had greater odds of depression(OR=1.47;95%CI: 1.14-1.90,P=0.003;P for trend=0.004)than those in the lowest.As to the third component,compared to the lowest tertile,the highest tertile had a lower odds of depression(OR=0.72;95%CI: 0.57-0.92,P=0.008;P for trend=0.005).Nevertheless,no significant associations were observed between other three components and depression.Conclusion Adherence to a diet characterized by frequent consumption of red meat,poultry,sweetened drinks and beer may increase depression risk.In contrast,a diet loaded by high intakes of rice,dark vegetables and light vegetables may reduce depression risk.