Depression Raises Risk Of Dangers In Old Age?
New research suggests that people who suffer from depression are at a high risk of developing dementia when they grow older, according to Yahoo News.
"We've known for a long time that people with some depression are more likely to develop cognitive decline and dementia in old age than people without depression," the study's lead author Robert S. Wilson, PhD, neuropsychiatrist at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center told the website.
Wilson added, "But dementia takes a long time to develop, more than a decade, and there's been school of thought that depression was perhaps an early sign of development of dementia and not a true risk factor. Here we show that is definitely not the case."
Wilson and his colleagues analyzed 1,764 people of an average age of 77, who were a part of the Religious Orders Study and the Rush Memory and Aging Project.
Participants were free of any memory or thinking problems at study baseline, according to Medical News Today. According to the website, each year for an average of 7.8 years, subjects were assessed for symptoms of depression, such as reduced appetite and loneliness, and took part in tests that gauged their memory and thinking skills.
315 participants developed dementia during the study period while 922 out of total number of candidates developed mild cognitive impairment, which is a condition that is a common precursor to Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's disease is reportedly the most common form of dementia.
According to Yahoo News, another theory has suggested that depression and dementia were in fact caused by the same abnormality in the brain, which would mean that higher levels of dementia would lead to more severe depression.
"We found that people did not become more depressed and some even became less depressed after they develop dementia. Furthermore, depression was not related to the common brain [abnormalities] that really drive dementia in old age. So depression appears to be a genuine risk factor for cognitive decline," explained Wilson.
