Dietary Taurine Intake, Nutrient Intakes and Dietary Habits by Depression in Korean Female College Students: a case-control study

초록

The purpose of this study was to investigate the dietary taurine intake, nutrient intakes and dietary habits by depression in Korean female college students. In this study, 65 with depression patients and 65 controls without depression were included on March, 2009. Depression was measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) and controls were matched for age. A 3 Day-Recall Method was used for dietary assessment (2 weekdays and 1 weekend). Average height, weight and BMI were 161.3±4.4 cm, 55.3±8.0 kg and 21.2±2.8 kg/m2 for depression patients and those of controls were 161.4±6.0 cm and 53.1±6.8 kg and 21.3±2.8 kg/m2, respectively. Averages of taurine intake in depression patients and controls were 89.1 mg/day and 88.0mg/day, respectively. There was no significant difference in taurine intake between depression patients and controls. The average intakes of carbohydrate, Vit A (p<0.05), β-carotine (p<0.01), Vit C, folate, cholesterol of depression patients were lower compared to controls, but not significantly except Vit A and β-carotine. The average of total dietary habit scores of the depression patients (47.0) was significantly lower than controls (51.3) (p<0.01). The average score of “eat meals at constant times” (p<0.05), “eat adequate amount of meals” (p<0.05), “have meals at with diverse foods” (p<0.05), “eat foods among meat, fish, egg, bean about two meals a day” (p<0.05) and “apply nutrition knowledge to daily life” (p<0.01) scores in depression patients were significantly lower than those of controls. These results show that depression patients have poor dietary habits and unbalanced nutrition stauts.