Depression Makes People Age Faster

People who are depressed are more likely to age faster than those who are not, a new study suggests.

Laboratory tests showed cells looked biologically older among people who were severely depressed or those who have been depressed in the past. These visible differences in a measure of cell ageing called telomere length could not be explained by other contributing factors, such as whether the person is a smoker or not.

The results of the study that tested more than 2,000 participants can be found in Molecular Psychiatry. Josine Verhoeven and colleagues from the VU University Medical Center in the Netherlands recruited 2,407 people to take part in the study. More than one third of the participants were currently depressed, a third had experienced a major depression in the past and the rest have never been depressed.

Participants were asked to give a blood sample for the researchers to analyze in the laboratory for possible signs of cellular ageing. They found that people who were or had been depressed had much shorter telomeres - the end of our chromosomes which house our DNA - than those who had never experienced depression.

The differences in the findings among these participants were obvious even after lifestyle differences such as heavy drinking and smoking, were taken into account. Participants who were extremely depressed or those who suffered from the worst kind of depression had even shorter telomeres. Dr. Verhoeven and colleagues assume that shortened telomeres were a result of the body's reaction to distress depression causes.

"This large-scale study provides convincing evidence that depression is associated with several years of biological ageing, especially among those with the most severe and chronic symptoms," the researchers said. However, there were no clear mentions of whether or not this ageing process is harmful or if it can also be reversed.