title: Do depressive patients with family history of dementia constitute a separate group? A case report study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Recently it has been suggested that patients with both depression and a family history of dementia are seven times as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease as are controls.
  
  
  METHODS
  Fifty patients aged 21 &#45 60 years suffering from DSM-IV Major Depression entered the study; three of them (6%) had a positive family history of dementia. Diagnosis was by SCAN v 2.0. The family history method was used to record family history. All depressed patients were investigated with the Dexamethasone Suppression Test (DST), brain SPECT, electro-oculogram (EOG), flash-electroretinogram (f-ERG) and Pattern-Reversal Visual Evoked Potentials (PR-VEPs). Student's t-test was used to analyse the results. All patients with positive family history had atypical features.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Two of them suffered from borderline personality disorder, in comparison to eight in the remainder of the sample and five in the rest of the atypicals. The age of onset of depression was lower. DST, SPECT, EOG and PR-VEPs findings were similar between groups. The only significant finding concerned the latency of the bs wave of the scotopic ERG (P < 0.01), but even in this, patients with positive history did not differ from the rest of the atypical patients.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The present study provided limited data connecting atypical features of depression, personality traits, psychological stressors, hypercortisolaemia and family history of dementia. Further research with larger samples is essential. ( Int J Psych Clin Pract 2000; 4: 215 - 222).
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
authors.forename: K N
authors.initials: KN
authors.lastname: Fountoulakis
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Fotiou
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Iacovides
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kaprinis
keywords: Depression Familial Aggregation Psychophysiology Biological Markers Spect Dementia Psychophysiology Dst