BACKGROUND:

This study aimed to evaluate the risk of depression and other cardiovascular comorbidities in Graves' disease (GD) patients in Asia.

METHODS:

The study patients were all newly diagnosed with GD [International Classification of Disease, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) 242.0] from January 1998 to December 2008. Patients aged <20 years or those with preexisting mental disorder (ICD-9-CM 290-319) were excluded from analyses. Control patients were randomly selected for the non-GD cohort, 1:4 frequency matched to the GD cohort according to sex, age and index year. The same exclusion criteria applied to the GD cohort were applied to the non-GD cohort. The GD cohort contained 4195 patients and the non-GD cohort contained 16 780 patients.

RESULTS:

The GD patients were more likely to have diabetes (8.03% vs. 4.48%, P < 0.0001), hypertension (18.1% vs. 13.5%, P < 0.0001), hyperlipidemia (11.9% vs. 9.09%, P < 0.0001) and coronary artery disease (10.3% vs. 5.86%, P < 0.0001) than the control patients were. The GD patients were also associated with significantly higher risk of depression than the control patients were (hazard ratio = 1.69, 95% confidence interval = 1.45-1.96).

CONCLUSION:

GD and GD treatment are associated with increased risk of depression diabetes and diabetic complications in Asian patients.