Generalized anxiety disorder symptoms and type 2 diabetes onset: Findings from the Prospective Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg F4 and FF4 studies

Objective: To investigate the association of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptomology on the incidence of type 2 diabetes. Research design & methods: Participants from the prospective KORA F4/FF4 German cohort were followed for a mean of 6.5 years. Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale-7 (GAD-7) was used to assess GAD symptoms and incident type 2 diabetes cases were confirmed using a standard oral glucose tolerance test. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to estimate the effect of GAD symptoms on the incidence of type 2 diabetes. Results: The present study included 1694 participants (51.8% women, 48.2% men) with a mean age of 51.2 years, among whom 113 (6.7%) had high GAD symptoms. During the follow-up period (11,102 person/years), 113 (6.5%) type 2 diabetes cases were confirmed. Participants with GAD symptoms had 2-fold higher incidence of type 2 diabetes than participants without GAD (17.7 vs. 8.7 cases/1000 person-years). Correspondingly, GAD symptoms independently increased the risk of type 2 diabetes by an odds ratio of 2.09 [95%CI 1.02-4.32, p = 0.04] after adjustment for concurrent sociodemographic, lifestyle and cardiometabolic risk factors, high sensitivity C-reactive protein, depression, and the use of antidepressant medications. Additionally, GAD symptoms had an even larger impact on the onset of type 2 diabetes incidence following additional adjustment for prediabetes at baseline (2.68 [1.23-5.88], p=0.01). Conclusions: Participants with GAD symptoms had 2-times higher odds of type 2 diabetes incidence during 6.5 years of follow-up, highlighting the significant role of dysregulated stress mechanisms in the pathway to developing type 2 diabetes.