PTSD and Risk of Poor T2D Outcomes in Veterans: Daily Dose

_{©New Africa/AdobeStock}

Patient Care brings primary care clinicians a lot of medical news every day—it’s easy to miss an important study. The Daily Dose provides a concise summary of one of the website's leading stories you may not have seen.

Last week, we reported on a study published in JAMA Network Open that examined the association between meeting diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and risk of poor type 2 diabetes (T2D) outcomes.

The study

Researchers tapped deidentified data for 10 002 veterans from US Veterans Health Administration health records from October 1, 2011, to September 30, 2022 to conduct the retrospective cohort study. Participants were aged 18 to 80 years and had comorbid PTSD and T2D. The main outcomes were insulin initiation, poor glycemic control, any microvascular complication, and all-cause mortality.

The findings

Among participants whose symptoms no longer met diagnostic criteria for PTSD had an 8% lower risk for T2D-related microvascular complications. Among those aged 18 to 49 years, although not among those aged 50 to 80 years, the shift in PTSD status was associated with a significant 31% reduction in odds of initiating treatment with insulin and significant 61% lower risk of all-cause mortality.

Authors' comment

"To our knowledge, this is the first evidence that PTSD is a modifiable risk factor, albeit a modest one, for some adverse diabetes outcomes such as microvascular complications."

Click here for more details.