New Delhi: Women could be more likely to develop mental health conditions, while men might tend to develop cardiovascular and renal complications following a diagnosis of diabetes, a study has found.
Researchers, including those from Queen Mary University in the UK, said that women and men experience cardiovascular disease, renal disease and mental health conditions differently, but research has not yet described the disease trajectories according to sex and age in people with type 2 diabetes.
The study, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, looked at anonymised health records from 28,720 men and women in the UK who developed type 2 diabetes between 2010 and 2020.
In the years following a diagnosis, 39 per cent of the participants experienced at least one significant health event, with the event’s trajectory and timing differing by sex.
The researchers found that women were more likely to develop mental health conditions post-diagnosis (8.1 per cent compared to 5.3 per cent) and to experience trajectories culminating in death, while men showed higher proportions of cardiovascular disease (8.4 per cent compared to 5.3 per cent), end-stage renal disease, and hypertension.
The team noted that on average, women used more health services and long-term prescriptions than men, which may contribute to the increased diagnoses.
The study also found similarities between the sexes — a combination of diabetes and a mental health condition among both women and men was linked with a premature death, compared to other trajectories.
Across all age groups and sexes, hypertension was found to be the most frequent event following type 2 diabetes.
“Women exhibited greater vulnerability to mental health conditions post-T2D (type 2 diabetes), while men showed higher proportion of cardiovascular and renal complications, and had earlier onset of most events compared to women,” the authors wrote.
“Both sexes experienced earlier mortality when T2D was combined with a mental health condition,” they said.
The findings highlight the need for healthcare interventions differentiated by characteristics like sex and age, the researchers said.
The team added younger women with diabetes were showing mental health complications earlier and more often than expected, suggesting that a routine psychological screening should be incorporated into standard diabetes care.
For men, as cardiovascular and kidney risks tended to emerge earlier, monitoring and stronger strategies to support men’s engagement with treatment over time is needed, they said.
