Timely intervention for depression may reduce future risk of dementia

Overview: Symptomatic depression increased the risk of developing dementia by 51%, but those who were treated for depression had a significantly lower risk of being diagnosed with depression later in life.

sauce: Elsevier

Depression has long been associated with an increased risk of dementia. new research We provide evidence that timely treatment of depression may reduce the risk of dementia in certain patient groups.

More than 55 million people worldwide have dementia. There is no effective cure for dementia, but identifying ways to minimize or prevent dementia can help reduce the burden of the disease.

Led by Jin-Tai Yu, MD, PhD, Huashan Hospital, Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, and Wei Cheng, PhD, Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, the study biological psychiatry.

Professors Yu and Cheng used data collected by the UK Biobank, a population-based cohort of over 500,000 participants. The current study included more than 350,000 of his participants, including 46,280 of his participants with depression. During the course of the study, 725 of the depressed patients developed dementia.

Previous studies examining whether treatments for depression, such as medication and psychotherapy, reduce the risk of dementia have had mixed results, leaving the question open.

“Older people seem to experience different patterns of depression over time,” said Professor Yu.

“Thus, individual variability in symptoms may not only result in different dementia risks, but also may lead to heterogeneous efficacy of depression treatments in relation to dementia prevention.”

To address that heterogeneity, researchers categorized participants into one of four courses of depression. Begins with symptoms of moderate or high severity and then decreases. Chronic course of ongoing severe depressive symptoms. Chronic low course with consistently maintained mild or moderate depressive symptoms.

As expected, this study found that depression increases the risk of dementia. However, the degree of risk depends on the course of the depression. Patients with an increasing, chronically high, or chronically low course of depression were more likely to develop dementia, whereas those with a decreasing course had a greater risk of dementia than participants without depression. did not face any risks.

Researchers most wanted to know whether getting treatment for depression lowered the risk of dementia. Overall, treated depressed participants had an approximately 30% reduced risk of dementia compared to untreated participants.

When the researchers divided the participants by course of depression, those with an increased and chronically low course of depression had a lower risk of dementia with treatment, whereas those with a chronically higher course had a lower risk of dementia. , no treatment benefit was seen with respect to dementia risk.

“Again, an ineffectively treated course of depression carries significant medical risks.” biological psychiatry Editor John Krystal, MD. He said, “In this case, symptomatic depression increases the risk of dementia by 51%, but treatment was associated with a significant reduction in this risk.” .

“This demonstrates the need for timely treatment of depression among late-stage depressed patients,” added Professor Cheng. “Providing depressive treatment to late-life depressed patients not only reduces affective symptoms, but may delay the onset of dementia.”

“The new findings also shed light on previous research,” said Professor Cheng. “Differences in efficacy between depression courses may explain the discrepancy among previous studies.”

See also

About this depression and dementia research news

author: Eileen Leahy
sauce: Elsevier
contact: Eileen Leahy – Elsevier
image: image is public domain

Original research: closed access.
“Depression, Depression Treatment, and Dementia Risk: A Prospective Cohort Study of 354,313 Participants” by Weichen et al. biological psychiatry

Overview

Depression, Depression Treatment, and Dementia Risk: A Prospective Cohort Study of 354,313 Participants

Background

To explore associations between the course of depression, use of depression treatment, and risk of developing dementia.

Method

In this prospective cohort study, 354,313 participants aged 50 to 70 years were recruited from the UK Biobank between 2006 and 2010 and followed to 2020 for a total of 4,212,929 person-years. We first studied the impact of depression on the incidence of dementia across four subgroups characterized by the course of depressive symptoms. Her 46,820 participants diagnosed with depression were then further divided into treated and untreated groups. We compared the risk of dementia among all participants with depression and different depression treatment groups for four courses of depression symptoms by performing a survival analysis.

result

Depression was associated with a 51% higher risk of dementia, of which the increasing, chronically high, and chronically low courses were associated with increased dementia risk. , no association was found for the decreasing course. Compared to untreated depression, those treated for depression corresponded to a hazard ratio of 0.7 (95% confidence interval = 0.62-0.77). Among the three adverse courses, increasing symptoms of depression and treating chronically low symptoms reduced the risk of dementia by 42% and 29%, whereas reducing chronically high symptoms was It was not significant.

Conclusion

The negative association between treatment of depression and development of dementia was significant in an increasing chronically low course, suggesting timely intervention strategies before depression progresses to a chronically severe state. emphasizes the need for