Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Mar 15, 2025; 16(3): 100245
Published online Mar 15, 2025. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v16.i3.100245
Overweight in mediating the association between depression and new-onset diabetes: A population-based research from Health and Retirement Study
Zi-Hao Zhang, Shuo-Ying Yue, Meng Su, Hong-Lu Zhang, Qing-Cui Wu, Zhi-Lin Li, Nai-Jian Zhang, Zhi-Yi Hao, Man Li, Hui-Jie Huang, Jun Ma, Yuan-Yuan Liu, Hui Wang
Zi-Hao Zhang, Shuo-Ying Yue, Meng Su, Hong-Lu Zhang, Qing-Cui Wu, Zhi-Lin Li, Nai-Jian Zhang, Zhi-Yi Hao, Man Li, Hui-Jie Huang, Jun Ma, Yuan-Yuan Liu, Hui Wang, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin 300070, China
Jun Ma, Yuan-Yuan Liu, Hui Wang, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Environment, Nutrition and Public Health, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin 300070, China
Jun Ma, Yuan-Yuan Liu, Hui Wang, Tianjin Center for International Collaborative Research on Environment, Nutrition and Public Health, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin 300070, China
Co-first authors: Zi-Hao Zhang and Shuo-Ying Yue.
Co-corresponding authors: Yuan-Yuan Liu and Hui Wang.
Author contributions: Wang H and Liu YY designed the research; Zhang ZH, Wu QC, Li ZL, Zhang NJ, Hao ZY and Li M performed the research; Wang H, Liu YY, Zhang HL and Huang HJ contributed new reagents/analytic tools; Zhang ZH, Yue SY, Su M and Wang H analyzed the data; Zhang ZH, Yue SY, Su M and Wang H wrote the paper. Zhang ZH and Yue SY contributed equally to this work as co-first authors, because they contributed efforts of equal substance throughout the research process. The choice of these researchers as co-first authors respects this equal contribution, while recognizing the spirit of teamwork and collaboration of this study. Meanwhile, Wang H and Liu YY contributed equally to this work as co-corresponding authors, because they worked together on assigning tasks and answering questions that arose during the research process. In summary, we believe that designating Zhang ZH and Yue SY as co-first authors and designating Wang H and Liu YY as co-corresponding authors is fitting for our manuscript as it accurately reflects our team’s collaborative spirit and equal contributions.
Supported by the Scientific Research Program of the Tianjin Education Commission (Natural Science), No. 2023KJ033.
Institutional review board statement: All data in the HRS study are available upon request, following an established proposal procedure. Relevant information, documents and the proposal submission link may be found at https://hrs.isr.umich.edu.
Informed consent statement: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declared no conflict of interest.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hui Wang, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Tianjin Medical University, No. 22 Qixiangtai Road, Heping District, Tianjin 300070, China. wanghuitmu@foxmail.com
Received: August 11, 2024
Revised: November 4, 2024
Accepted: December 16, 2024
Published online: March 15, 2025
Processing time: 163 Days and 3.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Depression was positively associated with the risk of new-onset diabetes in middle-aged and older populations in the United States, and 61% of this process was mediated by overweight. This indicated that new-onset diabetes was not a direct complication of depression; rather, depressive states led to behaviors that increased the risk of overweight and, consequently, new-onset diabetes.