Abstract
Background
The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations between courses of depression,
the application of depression treatment, and the risk of incident dementia.
Methods
In this prospective cohort study, 354,313 participants ages 50–70 years were recruited
from the UK Biobank between 2006 and 2010 and were followed until 2020, with a total
of 4,212,929 person-years. We initially studied the effect of depression on dementia
incidence across 4 subgroups characterized by courses of depressive symptoms. Then,
46,820 participants with a diagnosis of depression were further categorized into treated
and untreated groups. We compared the risk of dementia among different depression
treatment groups in all participants who were depressed as well as 4 courses of depressive
symptoms by performing survival analyses.
Results
Depression was associated with a 51% higher risk of dementia, among which the increasing,
chronically high, and chronically low courses were associated with increased dementia
risk, while no association was found in the decreasing course. Compared to those who
were depressed but untreated, receiving depression treatments corresponded to a hazard
ratio of 0.7 (95% CI, 0.62–0.77). Among the 3 detrimental courses, treatments for
increasing and chronically low symptoms of depression were associated with a 32% and
28% lower risk of dementia, respectively, while the reduction effect for chronically
high symptoms was insignificant.
Conclusions
The negative association between depression treatment and incident dementia was significant
in the increasing and chronically low courses, highlighting the necessity of timely
interventional strategies before depression progresses to a chronically severe state.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 03, 2022
Accepted:
August 29,
2022
Received in revised form:
August 5,
2022
Received:
May 5,
2022
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 Society of Biological Psychiatry.
