title: Depressive Mood and Testosterone Related to Declarative Verbal Memory Decline in Middle-Aged Caregivers of Children with Eating Disorders.
abstract: Caring for children diagnosed with a chronic psychological disorder such as an eating disorder (ED) can be used as a model of chronic stress. This kind of stress has been reported to have deleterious effects on caregivers' cognition, particularly in verbal declarative memory of women caregivers. Moreover, high depressive mood and variations in testosterone (T) levels moderate this cognitive decline. The purpose of this study was to characterize whether caregivers of individuals with EDs (n = 27) show declarative memory impairments compared to non-caregivers caregivers (n = 27), using for this purpose a standardized memory test (Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test). Its purpose was also to examine the role of depressive mood and T in memory decline. Results showed that ED caregivers presented high depressive mood, which was associated to worse verbal memory performance, especially in the case of women. In addition, all caregivers showed high T levels. Nonetheless, only in the case of women caregivers did T show a curvilinear relationship with verbal memory performance, meaning that the increases of T were associated to the improvement in verbal memory performance, but only up to a certain point, as after such point T continued to increase and memory performance decreased. Thus, chronic stress due to caregiving was associated to disturbances in mood and T levels, which in turn was associated to verbal memory decline. These findings should be taken into account in the implementation of intervention programs for helping ED caregivers cope with caregiving situations and to prevent the risk of a pronounced verbal memory decline.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychobiology, University of Valencia, Avenida Blasco Ibañez, 2146010 Valencia, Spain. Angel.Romero@uv.es.
authors.forename: Ángel
authors.initials: Á
authors.lastname: Romero-Martínez
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychobiology, University of Valencia, Avenida Blasco Ibañez, 2146010 Valencia, Spain. Nicolas.Ruiz@uv.es.
authors.forename: Nicolás
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ruiz-Robledillo
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychobiology, University of Valencia, Avenida Blasco Ibañez, 2146010 Valencia, Spain. Luis.Moya@uv.es.
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Moya-Albiol
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000209:etiology*; D001068:Feeding and Eating Disorders / Q000451:nursing; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D013030:Spain; D013312:Stress, Physiological; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications*; D013739:Testosterone / Q000097:blood; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D013739:Testosterone
keywords: caregivers; declarative memory; depressive mood; eating disorders; testosterone