The Comorbidities of Late Life Depression

  

Comorbidities of Late-life Depression: An Increased Risk of Dementia

              The paper “Reconsidering remission in recurrent late-life depression: clinical presentation and phenotypic predictors of relapse following successful antidepressant treatment” (Taylor et al., 2025) covers a study that focused on participant’s susceptibility to relapse after a period of remission, over the course of a two-year timespan.

              Late-life depression specifically refers to repeated recurrent depressive episodes and is typically seen in adults of a more advanced age. Some of its major symptoms are increased disability, poor or impaired cognitive function and an increased risk of dementia.  Even with regular treatment, these patients remain at a high risk of relapse – between 35% and 45% of patients – which is thought to only worsen the already negative effects of the symptoms on patients.

              Although patients with late-life depression do not necessarily experience a more rapid decline than those who have never been depressed, they were shown to perform worse at baseline cognitive functions than individuals with either early-onset depression or no depression at all (Ly et al., 2021). This suggests that individuals with late-onset depression might have a lower threshold for developing dementia. The increase in symptom severity associated with multiple remissions of late-life depression may also explain the more rapid decline in verbal skills and delayed memory ability. Considering that recurrence risk is substantially influenced by an individual’s environmental and social factors – and that recurrence in people with late-life depression has been associated with lower levels of instrumental social support – it is not entirely difficult to see why their baseline is significantly lower than individuals in other test groups.

 

References

Taylor WD et al (2024). Reconsidering remission in recurrent late-life depression: clinical presentation and phenotypic predictors of relapse following successful antidepressant treatment. Psychological Medicine 54, 4896–4907. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291724003246

Ly, M., Karim, H.T., Becker, J.T. et al. Late-life depression and increased risk of dementia: a longitudinal cohort study. Transl Psychiatry 11, 147 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-021-01269-y