Prevalence and Predictors of Depression among Patients with Type 2 Diabetes: A Multicenter Cross-sectional Study from Bangladesh

Depression is a common comorbidity of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) which adversely affects diabetes management and outcome. Identifying and treating comorbid depression may improve diabetes care. This cross-sectional study was conducted in several tertiary hospitals throughout Bangladesh from July 2017 to April 2018. Nine hundred (900) adult patients with T2DM aging ≥25 years having diabetes for at least 6 months and equal numbers of non-diabetic otherwise healthy controls were recruited from the outpatient departments of these centers. Depression was assessed in all consenting patients and controls by administering the Bangla (local language) version of the PRIME-MD Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9); participants obtaining a score of 5 or more were labeled to have depression. Depression was present in 60.3% of T2DM patients and in 29.4% of controls. Statistically significant difference was found in age, marital status, occupation, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, systolic blood pressure (BP), diastolic BP and PHQ-9 score between diabetic and non-diabetic subjects (<0.001). T2DM subjects had 4.71-fold higher odds of depression in comparison to the controls (95% CI: 3.76-5.90; p<0.001). Age ≥50 years, unmarried status, years of schooling ≤10 years, underweight, abdominal obesity, and hypertension appeared to be the significant predictors of depression in the study subjects. In T2DM subjects, diabetes in the family members, the presence of other comorbidities, diabetic complications, diabetes duration >5 years, insulin use, using insulin syringe for injection, albuminuria and CKD were the important predictors of depression. Our study found higher prevalence and risk of depression in T2DM patients than their non-diabetic counterparts. T2DM patients should be screened for depression in order to achieve and maintain the treatment goals.

De Novo Assembly and Characterization of Tall Fescue Transcriptome under Water Stress

Water stress is a fundamental problem for tall fescue [Lolium arundinaceum (Schreb.) Darbysh.] cultivation in the south-central United States. Genetic improvement of tall fescue for water-stress tolerance is the key strategy for improving its persistence in the region. Genotypes with contrasting characteristics for relative water content and osmotic potential were identified from a tall fescue population. Transcriptome profiling between water-stress-tolerant (B400) and water-stress-susceptible (W279) genotypes was performed to unravel the genetic regulatory mechanism of water-stress responses in tall fescue. RNA samples from leaf, shoot, root, and inflorescence were pooled and sequenced through Illumina paired-end sequencing. A total of 199,399 contigs were assembled with an average length of 585 bp. Between the two genotypes, 2986 reference transcripts (RTs) were significantly differentially expressed and 1048 of them could be annotated and found to associate with metabolic pathways and enzyme coding genes. In total, 175 differentially expressed RTs were reported for various stress-related functions. Among those, 65 encoded kinase proteins, 40 each encoded transposons, and transporter proteins were previously reported to be involved with abiotic stress responses. A total of 6348 simple sequence repeats and 6658 single-nucleotide polymorphisms were identified in the contig sequences. Primers were developed from the corresponding sequences, which might be used as candidate gene markers in tall fescue. This study will lead to identification of genes or transcription factors related to water-stress tolerance and development of a comprehensive molecular marker system to facilitate marker-assisted breeding in tall fescue.