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Higher dietary glycemic index, but not glycemic load, is associated with a lower prevalence of depressive symptoms in a cross-sectional study of young and middle-aged Japanese women

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Abstract

Objective

Epidemiologic evidence on the associations between dietary glycemic index (GI) and glycemic load (GL) and depressive symptoms is not only limited, particularly in Asian populations where dietary GI and GL are typically higher than in Western countries, but also inconclusive. This cross-sectional study examined these associations in Japanese women.

Methods

Subjects were 3963 young (age 18-years) and 3826 middle-aged (mean age 47.8 years) Japanese women. Dietary GI and GL were assessed using a validated diet history questionnaire. Depression symptoms were defined as present when subjects had a Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression score ≥16.

Results

The prevalence of depressive symptoms was 50.2% for young women and 27.3% for middle-aged women. The mean (SD) values of energy-adjusted dietary GI and GL (GI for glucose = 100) were, respectively, 64.9 (4.3) and 142.0 (27.4) for young women and 65.0 (4.1) and 142.2 (29.5) for middle-aged women. After adjustment for potential confounding factors, higher dietary GI was associated with a lower prevalence of depressive symptoms. Adjusted OR (95% CI) for depressive symptoms in the highest compared to lowest quintiles of dietary GI was 0.66 (0.52, 0.82) for young women (P for trend = 0.001) and 0.75 (0.60, 0.96) for middle-aged women (P for trend = 0.046). Conversely, there was no association between dietary GL and depressive symptoms in either age group.

Conclusions

Dietary GI, but not GL, was inversely associated with depressive symptoms in a group of young and middle-aged Japanese women with relatively high dietary GI and GL.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Hiroka Sakai and Yuki Kataya (Department of Nutrition, School of Human Cultures, University of Shiga Prefecture, Japan) for their assistance with manuscript preparation. The authors thank the members of the Three-generation Study of Women on Diets and Health Study Group listed elsewhere [24].

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nutrition, School of Human Cultures, University of Shiga Prefecture, Shiga, Japan

    Naoko Minobe

  2. Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 113 0033, Japan

    Kentaro Murakami

  3. Department of Social and Preventive Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Satomi Kobayashi & Satoshi Sasaki

  4. Department of Social and Preventive Epidemiology, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Hitomi Suga

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  1. Naoko Minobe
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The Three-generation Study of Women on Diets and Health Study Group

Contributions

Author contributions

NM. contributed to the conceptualization of the study question, conducted the statistical analysis and prepared the first draft of the manuscript; KM contributed to the concept and design of the survey, conceptualized the study question, interpreted the data, provided input into the final draft of the manuscript, prepared the revised version of the manuscript, and had primary responsibility for the final content of the manuscript; SK, HS and SS contributed to the concept and design of the survey, coordination of the fieldwork, and data collection and management, and provided input into the final draft of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kentaro Murakami.

Ethics declarations

Ethical aspects

This study was conducted according to the guidelines laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki and all procedures involving human subjects were approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Medicine. Written informed consent was obtained from each participant and also from a parent/guardian for participants aged <20 years.

Conflict of interest

All authors declare that there was no conflict of interest.

Financial support

This work was supported in part by the Grants-in Aid for Young Scientists (B) (to K.M., Grant number 15K16213) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan and the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) (to S.S., Grant number 22240077) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science had no role in the design, analysis or writing of this article.

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Minobe, N., Murakami, K., Kobayashi, S. et al. Higher dietary glycemic index, but not glycemic load, is associated with a lower prevalence of depressive symptoms in a cross-sectional study of young and middle-aged Japanese women. Eur J Nutr 57, 2261–2273 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-017-1502-3

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