By Traci Pedersen
Associate News Editor Last updated: 11 Aug 2019 ~ 1 min read
Depression symptoms in cognitively healthy older adults together with brain amyloid — protein deposits which are a biological marker of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) — could trigger changes in memory and thinking over time, according to a new study published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
“Our research found that even modest levels of brain amyloid deposition can impact the relationship between depression symptoms and cognitive abilities,†said Jennifer Gatchel, M.D., Ph.D., of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Division of Geriatric Psychiatry, and lead author of the study.
“This raises the possibility that depression symptoms could be targets in clinical trials aimed at delaying the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Further research is needed in this areaâ€
Increasingly, Alzheimer’s research has focused on the preclinical stage, when people have biological evidence of AD but no or minimal obvious symptoms, and when interventions might have the potential to prevent future decline of older adults.
Although previous studies have shown a link between depression and cognitive deficits in older adults, the new study is among the first to reveal that this association is influenced by the presence of cortical amyloid in unimpaired older adults, even when depression symptoms are mild to moderate.
Data were collected by researchers over a seven-year period from 276 community-dwelling older adults, all participants in the landmark Harvard Aging Brain Study (HABS).
They discovered a significant link between worsening depression symptoms and declining cognition over two to seven years that was influenced by AD pathology, as measured by PET imaging of brain amyloid.