Association between Muscular Strength and Depressive Symptoms among Chinese Nursing Freshmen—A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Increased physical activity level is related to lower risk of depressive symptoms, and an inverse association between muscular strength and risk of depressive symptoms among the elderly population. However, the association among younger adults is unclear. The aim of this study was to examine the association between muscle strength, using handgrip strength as a representative of skeletal muscle strength, and the risk of depressive symptoms among Chinese female college freshman. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 867 participants aged between 16-23 years. Handgrip strength was measured with a handheld digital Smedley dynamometer, and depressive symptoms were evaluated using the 20-item Zung self-rating depression scale (SDS) with 3 cut-off points to indicate elevated depressive symptoms. We found that 10.7% of participants (17.2% or 29.2%) were classified as having moderate to severe depressive symptoms using 50 as the cut-off point. After adjusting for these potential confounders, the adjusted odds ratios for moderate-to-severe depressive symptoms across tertile of relative handgrip strength were 1.00 (reference) for tertile 1, 0.61 (95% CI: 0.35, 1.04) for tertile 2, and 0.53 (95% CI: 0.39, 0.94) for tertile 3 (P for trend: 0.024). The significant associations remained when other cut-off points (SDS 48 or 45) were used. Interactions between the handgrip strength and potential confounders for depressive symptoms in the final models were insignificant. This study showed that handgrip strength is inversely and independently related to the risk of depressive symptoms among Chinese female college freshman. These results can help with the development of an effective intervention strategy against depression. For future research, it is important to explore the causality of the effects of handgrip strength on the depressive symptoms by intervention study.

Variables de condición física predictivas de sintomatología depresiva en estudiantes universitarios de Cali, Colombia

“…Por último, con una población similar a la del presente estudio Ren et al, (2019) muestran asociación entre la fuerza muscular y sintomatología depresiva en estudiantes de enfermería chinos. Participaron 867 estudiantes entre 16 y 23 años, los resultados arrojaron que el 10,7 % presentaban síntomas depresivos graves, y aunque se encontró una relación débil entre bajos niveles de fuerza prensil y los síntomas depresivos, los hallazgos fueron significativos según el valor p = 0,024.…”

“…En el caso de los jóvenes estudiantes, asistir a la universidad por primera vez, resulta una etapa importante de la vida, la cual genera nuevos retos que implican arduas tareas académicas y negociación de un nuevo panorama social en un mundo competitivo y moderno (Arévalo et al, 2019); aunado a esto, algunos estudiantes mantienen una vida laboral en paralelo, exponiendo a los estudiantes universitarios a un estrés constante que resulta en ocasiones un detonante de síntomas y estados asociados a la depresión (Ren et al, 2019;Ren et al, 2020).…”

“…En China, Ren et al, (2019) analizaron la relación ajustada entre el tercil de fuerza relativa de agarre y la puntuación total de los síntomas depresivos en jóvenes universitarios, encontrando que la fuerza prensil, se relaciona de manera significativa e independiente, con menor riesgo de sufrir síntomas depresivos. Bruggink et al, (2019) encontraron que en 241 jóvenes entre los 12 y 17 años con obesidad, los síntomas depresivos estaban relacionados con menor distancia recorrida en una prueba de capacidad cardiorrespiratoria.…”