RESEARCHERS studied adults with depressive symptoms and projected their risk of developing cognitive impairment later in life.
People living with depression in early adulthood had higher odds of developing dementia. Individuals with more severe depressive symptoms in early and late adulthood had a higher risk of developing severe cognitive decline.
According to the authors of a recent study, up to 20% of people will experience an episode of clinical depression in their lifetime.
Scientists have establishedTrusted Source that depression coexists with dementia in late life and that depression may be an early symptom of the disease.
Now, in a study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s DiseaseTrusted Source, scientists report that depression in young adulthood is associated with a 59% higher risk of developing dementia.
Medical News Today questioned the study’s first author, Dr. Willa Brenowitz, a San Francisco epidemiologist, regarding the findings. She noted:
“We did find that early adulthood and late-life higher depressive symptoms were associated with late-life cognitive impairment in older adults. And that might mean early adulthood depressive symptoms [are] potential risk factors for dementia and should be investigated further.”
Dr. Brenowitz, senior researcher Dr. Kristine Yaffe, and their colleagues pooled data from four large preexisting groups of participants to make a total of around 15,000 people aged 20–89 years.
The four groups are part of ongoing studies investigating risk factors for either cardiovascular disease or body composition and reduced function in older people.
Next, the researchers employed a complex statistical method called imputation. They wanted to understand whether depression in early adulthood is associated with an increased risk of dementia.
Dr. Brenowitz defined imputation as “[t]rying to make associations that would not be otherwise possible.” She explained to MNT:
Imputation is assigning missing data a value. The idea behind it is: We are missing data from these older adults on their [depressive symptoms as younger adults]. So, we are trying to assign a value to what we think their depressive symptoms were.
