High depressive symptoms link to cardiometabolic multimorbidity
High-stable symptoms carried hazard ratios of 1.91 in Chinese adults and 1.59 in US adults for incident cardiometabolic multimorbidity compared with low-stable symptoms.
Research Square
In a preprint analyzing 8,952 adults in China and 10,812 in the United States, researchers evaluated whether dynamic depressive symptom patterns track with incident cardiometabolic multimorbidity. Participants from the CHARLS and HRS cohorts were free of cardiometabolic multimorbidity at baseline. Investigators mapped four depressive symptom trajectories using three CES-D waves: low-stable, decreasing, increasing, and high-stable. Over follow-up, 527 participants in CHARLS and 811 in HRS developed cardiometabolic multimorbidity. In CHARLS, participants in the decreasing (HR = 1.44), increasing (HR = 1.64), and high-stable (HR = 1.91) groups showed higher risk than the low-stable group. In HRS, only the high-stable trajectory significantly predicted incident multimorbidity (HR = 1.59). Component outcome analyses showed that these associations were driven most strongly by incident heart disease.
Why it matters
Cardiometabolic multimorbidity represents a major clinical challenge in aging populations. Tracking dynamic mental health trajectories over time may help stratify individuals at elevated risk for age-related chronic disease accumulation.
Caveats
The study is an observational preprint that has not yet undergone peer review, which prevents causal conclusions. Furthermore, the increasing and decreasing symptom trajectories were only significantly tied to multimorbidity risk in the Chinese cohort.
The paper
Kunming Medical University
Research Square · 30 Sep 2026 · Preprint, not peer-reviewed