By Life Quotes, Inc. Staff

A new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine has found an intrinsic link between depression and Type 2 diabetes, according to CNN Health.

The study, which tracked 65,381 women between the ages of 50 and 75 over 10 years, found that even after taking lifestyle factors like physical activity into account, women who were depressed were 17 percent more likely to develop diabetes than those who weren’t. Furthermore, women taking antidepressants had a 25 percent increased risk of diabetes.

Similarly, women with diabetes were 29 percent more likely to become depressed, while the risk for those taking insulin therapy shot up to 53 percent.

“We can say that the two conditions are linked to each other and are both the causes and the consequences of each other,” said Frank Hu, the study’s senior author and professor at Harvard School of Public Health, in an interview with CNN.

Both diabetes and depression are chronic illnesses that can be deadly if untreated, making life insurance important for anyone suffering from those diseases. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that diabetes was responsible for 3 percent of U.S. deaths in 2008, while Mental Health America reported that 21 million Americans suffer from depression annually.

This article was originally published by Life Quotes, Inc.