Pseudodementia

Parallels Between Major Depressive Disorder and Alzheimer’s Disease: Role of Oxidative Stress and Genetic Vulnerability

“…These findings are consistent with other articles, i.e. the study of Alexopoulus and colleagues (2003), who reported that “pseudo-dementia” or reversible dementia – a syndrome with a cognitive clinical phenotype, but actually expressing a major depressive episode (Caine 1981) - manifested by 23 patients with geriatric depression, were 4.7 times more likely to develop permanent dementia than 37 depressive elderly patients without cognitive impairment, in a 33.8 month follow-up. A study of clinical risk factors obtained performed with medical records on a population-based case-control study over 14 years from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN (Author-Kokmen et al 1991) reported that among more than 20 risk factors for AD, the most statistically significant was episodic depression.…”

Neuropsychological effects of depression and age in an elderly sample: A confirmatory study.

“…Their memory impairments also are less prominent. Although we and others have written previously about depression being associated with a “subcortical pattern” of cognitive deficits (Caine, 1981; Cummings & Benson, 1984; King & Caine, 1990), our current results cannot be explained by such a model. Rather, they point to more extensive cortical dysfunction.…”

Depression Influences Intellectual Impairment in Stroke Patients

“…The most significant finding from this study is that depression in stroke patients appears to be associated with their intellectual dysfunction, and that patients with depression and cognitive impair ment had smaller lesions than cognitively impaired patients without depression. Although the present data do not prove that depression and cognitive dysfunction are causally connected, this kind of interaction is analogous to that reported in patients with functional depression (Caine, 1981;Kiloh, 1961;McHugh & Folstein, 1979;Nott & Fleminger, 1975;Wells, 1979), and we believe it is another example of ‘¿ pseudo-dementia'or dementia of depression. We have also described other similarities between functional and post-stroke depressions, including clinical symptoms, time-courses, and res ponse to dexamethasone suppression test (Robinson et a!, 1983a;Robinson et a!, l984a,c;Lipsey el a!, 1985).…”