The link between depression and dementia

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Suffering from depression could double an elderly person's risk of developing dementia, a U.S. study shows. Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School looked at data on 949 people with an average age of 79 who were involved in the Framingham Heart Study. At the beginning of the heart study, all participants were free of dementia and were asked about depression through questions about sleep complaints, social relationships, general depression and other factors.
It was determined 13% of participants were depressed at the beginning of the study. Researchers then tracked their progress for up to 17 years. And the end of the study, 164 participants had dementia and 136 people were specifically diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The new study, which appears in the journal American Academy of Neurology, found 22% of people who were depressed at the start of the study developed dementia compared to 17% of those who were not depressed.
Researchers said the results were the same regardless of a person’s age, sex, education and whether they had the APOE gene, which increases a person’s risk of Alzheimer’s disease. “While it’s unclear if depression causes dementia, there are a number of ways depression might impact the risk of dementia,” study author Jane Saczynski said in a release. “Inflammation of brain tissue that occurs when a person is depressed might contribute to dementia. Certain proteins found in the brain that increase with depression may also increase the risk of developing dementia. In addition, several lifestyle factors related to long-term depression, such as diet and the amount of exercise and social time a person engages in, could also affect whether they develop dementia.” Read more: edmontonsun.com

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