Preclinical Symptoms of Major Depression in Very Old Age: A Prospective Longitudinal Study

Abstract

There are preclinical markers for individuals who will become depressed after a 3-year interval. Major depression may have a more chronic nature in very old age, in contrast to the relatively short clinical onset of depression seen in younger adults. The authors conclude that standard diagnostic instruments such as DSM-IV may have to take this lengthy course of impairment into consideration when dealing with very old adults.

Lifetime depressive and somatic symptoms as preclinical markers of late-onset depression

“…In contrast, Berger et al (1998) only found appetite disturbance and dysphoria as risk factors of lateonset depression. Their study is only in part comparable to our study, because current instead of lifetime symptoms were investigated.…”

“…Few authors examined current symptoms -defined as being present in the previous two weeks -as risk factors of later depression: an elevation of the risk of major depression in subjects showing current depressive symptoms one year (Horwath et al 1992) or 3.6 years before (Henderson et al 1997) was reported. Berger et al (1998) identified dysphoria and appetite disturbance as specific symptoms predicting later depression.According to Barkow et al (2001), pain, tiredness, dysphoria, agitation, increased appetite and feelings of worthlessness increased the risk of depression one year later in primary health care samples. However, none of these authors investigated lifetime symptoms as preclinical markers of ORIGINAL PAPER…”

Functional Disability and Neuroticism as Predictors of Late-Life Depression

“…This is in line with other studies reporting an elevation in depressive symptoms in elderly persons who were later diagnosed as depressed. [34][35][36] In the present study, differences in depressive symptoms at baseline were taken into account by adjusting for them in the regression analyses, in order to avoid the longitudinal effects' being biased by cross-sectional associations. The (cross-sectional) association between depressive symptoms and disability is well-established, 2,6,7,37 and subjects who are depressed are also known to be prone to over-report their level of trait-neuroticism.…”

The influence of lifetime depression on self-reported memory and cognitive problems: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey–Replication

“…A growing body of research has found depressive symptoms to precede CD and dementia (Berger, Small, Forsell, Winblad, & Backman, 1998;Jost & Grossberg, 1996). Studies have found a history of depression to be a risk factor for dementia even among those whose depression occurred as much has 10 to 20 years before the onset of dementia (Green et al, 2003;Jorm, 2001).…”