title: Psychosocial Risk Factors for Cognitive Decline in Late-Life Depression: Findings from the MTLD-III Study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Cognitive impairment and depression frequently co-occur in late life. There remains a need to better characterize psychosocial risk factors of cognitive decline in older adults with depression. We hypothesized that certain psychosocial factors would be associated with higher risk of cognitive decline in individuals with late-life depression.
  
  
  METHODS
  130 individuals aged ≥ 65 years who had achieved remission from a major depressive episode were randomized to donepezil or placebo and then closely followed for two years. Using Cox proportional hazard models, we examined the association between baseline median household income, education level, race, marital status, and social support and cognitive decline over the follow-up.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Lower interpersonal support (OR = 0.86 [0.74-0.99], p = .04) and lower baseline global neuropsychological score (OR = 0.56 [0.36-0.87], p = .001) predicted shorter time to conversion to MCI or dementia in univariate models. These exposures did not remain significant in multivariate analyses. Neither socioeconomic status nor other psychosocial factors independently predicted cognitive diagnostic conversion (p > .05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We did not find reliable associations between cognitive outcome and any of the psychosocial factors examined. Future large-scale, epidemiological studies, ideally using well-validated subjective measures, should better characterize psychosocial risk factors for cognitive decline in late-life depression.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada;
authors.forename: Soham
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rej
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Amy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Begley
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Ariel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gildengers
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Mary Amanda
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Dew
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Charles F
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Reynolds
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Meryl A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Butters
keywords: cognition; dementia; late-life depression; medical illness burden; mild cognitive impairment; psychosocial risk factors