title: Depressive Symptoms Increase the Risk of Mild Neurocognitive Disorders among Elderly Chinese.
abstract: Depression is prevalent among patients with late life neurocognitive disorders but its role as an independent risk factor is not established. We aimed to examine the longitudinal relationship between depression and the incidence of mild neurocognitive disorders (NCD) in a Chinese population.
  
  
  
  We analyzed data from 889 community-living Chinese elderly in the Singapore Longitudinal Aging Study (SLAS) cohort. All subjects were cognitively normal at baseline based on their performance on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Depression was defined as total score of 5 or more on the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale. Incident cases of mild NCD were ascertained at follow up after an average of 45 moths (range: 10-62). Odds ratios (OR) of associations were calculated in logistic regression models that adjusted for potential confounders.
  
  
  
  A total of 59 mild NCD cases were identified. Increased risk of mild NCD was observed for subjects who had depressive symptom at baseline (OR=2.56, 95%CI 1.17-5.60) after controlling for age, gender, education, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, heart disease, APOE genotype and length of follow-up. The interaction between depression and APOE genotype was not statistically significant.
  
  
  
  Depressive symptom was independently associated with increased risk of mild NCD among Chinese elderly. Effective management of late life depression may potentially reduce incident cases of NCD in the population.
authors.affiliation: Dr. Lei Feng, Department of Psychological Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, email: pcmfl@nus.edu.sg.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.forename: W-S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Lim
authors.forename: M-S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Chong
authors.forename: T-S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Q
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: M S Z
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Nyunt
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.forename: E-H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Kua
authors.forename: T-P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Ng
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D044466:Asian People; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology; D003863:Depression / Q000150:complications / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D057187:Independent Living; D016015:Logistic Models; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015995:Prevalence; D011446:Prospective Studies; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012307:Risk Factors; D012846:Singapore; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires