Smoking, Alcohol Consumption, and Depression in Association with Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes among Mexican Americans in Starr County, Texas

Previous studies on conditions like obesity, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) have explored the correlations between them and various other human conditions, including aortic stiffness, left ventricular hypertrophy and sleep apnea, as they predict possibilities of developing certain diseases in Mexican Americans. This study aims to observe the correlation between lifestyle decisions that could relate to the onset of the depression in normal, prediabetic, and diabetic individuals. These include smoking habits and alcohol consumption. Many papers have previously conducted research on these lifestyle habits as they relate to obesity, hypertension, diabetes, however, have done so in a singular analysis approach. For example, they only focused on alcohol consumption or smoking, whereas this study takes a more holistic approach that combines all the variables. Understanding the relationship that these conditions have with each other, through use of a case-control study for individual exposures and logistic regression methods for multiple exposures, heightens the chances of catching the development of these more serious long-term diseases. With smoking, ethanol, and mental health scales, we visualized their relation to diagnosis of T2DM. Data was collected on the Mexican American population in South Texas because unusually higher records of these major disease categories but without a solid explanation of what factors contribute the most to this increase. We found that smoking and alcohol consumption could not be considered significant predictors of depression in diabetic individuals, however a positive association between heavy physical activity and depression while holding bodyfat, smoking, alcohol, and weight constant