Background: Literature evidence suggests that glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) may have anti-depressant effects. However, population studies assessing the association between GLP-1RAs and depression risk are limited and have yielded mixed results.
Methods: Older adults with type 2 diabetes (T2D) who were newly prescribed either a GLP-1RA or a dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitor (DPP4i) were identified from 2016-2020 national Medicare Claims data. We employed 1:1 propensity score matching to control for potential confounding at baseline and a Cox proportional hazards regression to estimate hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for incident depression.
Results: We included 25,824 Medicare beneficiaries with T2D. Figure 1 presents the Kaplan-Meier plots showing the cumulative incidence of depression over time between matched groups. The incidence rate of depression among GLP-1RA users was lower than that among DPP4i users (46.3 cases vs. 57.1 cases per 1,000 person-years). In the Cox model, GLP-1RAs were significantly associated with a decreased risk of incident depression compared to DPP4i (HR, 0.81; 95%CI, 0.71-0.85).
Conclusion: Among older people with T2D, GLP-1RAs were associated with a significant decrease in the risk of depression compared to DPP4i.
