Centre for Policy on Ageing



Is late-life depression a predictor of Alzheimer's disease? — results from a historical cohort study
Author(s)	Robert van Reekum, Malcolm Binns, Diana Clarke
Journal title	International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 20, no 1, January 2005
Pages	pp 80-82
Source	http://www.interscience.wiley.com
Keywords	Depression ; Dementia ; Correlation ; Longitudinal surveys ; Canada.
Annotation	44 patients (69.51% female) - 21 with early onset depression (EOD), 23 with late onset depression (LOD) - mean age 75.05 on admission to a geriatric day hospital, participated in this Canadian study. Alzheimer's disease (AD) was the most common dementia in the sample (20.5%); all other dementias occurred at a rate of less than 12%. This short article outlines the study's main results, the findings of which support the hypothesis that individuals with late-life depression, and perhaps in particular the LOD subgroup, should be targeted for future studies of prevention of AD. However, the study's lack of power prevents it from confirming that the LOD subgroup is at higher risk than the EOD subgroup. The study found that the risk of developing AD was higher in those older depressed patients who were more cognitively impaired at entry into the day hospital. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-050127216 A
Classmark	ENR: EA: 49: 3J: 7S
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.