Prospective associations between hand grip strength and subsequent depressive symptoms in men and women aged 50 years and older: insights from the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe

In previous cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, depressive symptoms have been associated with lower hand grip strength (HGS), which is a convenient measure of overall muscular strength and serves as a marker of poor health. Most studies have considered low sample sizes or highly selective patient cohorts. We studied the association between depressive symptoms (EURO-D) and HGS in three waves from the cross-national panel dataset Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Linear regressions and Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) were conducted to determine factors associated with depressive symptoms and investigate whether HGS predicts future depressive symptoms. Cross-sectional HGS explained 7.0% (Wave 4), 5.7% (Wave 5), and 6.4% (Wave 6) of the EURO-D variance. In the GEE, we analyzed people without depression in Wave 4 ( = 39,572). HGS predicted future EURO-D ( = -0.21, OR = 0.979, 95%CI (0.979, 0.980),