Postpartum depression (PPD) is a common non-obstetric complication of childbearing and constitutes a serious threat to an infant’s well-being. Researchers conducted a prospective cohort study of all women with live singleton births between 1997 and 2008 (n=707,701) to examine patterns of PPD in relation to history of depression and other risk factors.
Compared with women without a history of depression, the risk of PPD was estimated to be more than 20 times higher in those with a previous diagnosis of depression. Among all women, independent of depression history, the relative risk (RR) of PPD in those with gestational diabetes was 1.70 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.36–2.13) compared to those without pre-gestational or gestational diabetes. Among women with a history of depression, pre-gestational diabetes was also associated with increased risk (RR, 1.49 [CI, 1.01–2.21]).
The results indicate that gestational diabetes is strongly associated with increased risk for PPD in women regardless of their depression history, while pre-gestational type 1 or type 2 diabetes represents an increase risk only in those with a history of depression.
The authors conclude that there may be different causal pathways for PPD in women with and without a history of depression.
The article can be read in full here.
