Depression and lower cognitive status are associated with rapid functional decline in Alzheimer's patients

"Making a prognosis for Alzheimer's disease is notoriously difficult because patients progress at such different rates," said first author Laura B. Zahodne, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the cognitive neuroscience division in the Department of Neurology and the Taub Institute at CUMC. "These results show that not only should we measure patients' memory and thinking abilities, we should also assess their depression, anxiety, and other psychological symptoms that may affect their prognosis."

The title of the paper is "Coupled Cognitive and Functional Change in Alzheimer's Disease and the Influence of Depressive Symptoms" (JAD Volume 34/Issue 4 (March 2013)). Devangere Devanand, MD, professor of clinical psychiatry and neurology at CUMC, co-director of the Memory Disorders Center at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, and director of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, also contributed to this paper.

The study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Aging (R01 AG007370 and T32 AG00261). This research was also supported by the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at CUMC, which is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program, through grant UL1 TR000040.

Source: Columbia University Medical Center