Depression Boosts Chances of Developing Alzheimer's

A group of experts from the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago has recently made a very interesting finding. The scientists learned that, in older patients, the presence of symptoms associated with depression can be a clear indicator of a person's chances of developing Alzheimer's disease. This is a form of dementia that is oftentimes fatal, and which reduces sufferers' cognitive abilities to the point where they can no longer remember and recognize things, LiveScience reports.

The correlation between the two conditions is nothing new. Scientists have known that they go hand in hand for many ears, but what they couldn't figure out was which way the connection worked. In other words, they were trying to find out whether depression is a symptom of Alzheimer's, or a cause of the neurodegenerative disorder. What the team did was prove that the two condition are separate from each other, and more importantly, that depression symptoms boost the risk of developing Alzheimer's by 50 percent.

Details of the investigation appear in two separate research papers, that were published in the July 6 issue of the esteemed scientific journal Neurology. One of the possible explanations for why depression favors dementia is that the condition activates neural pathways in the brain that alter the chemistry of the organ. “There may be some actual structural changes associated with depression that render depressed individuals, by the time they reach old age, a little bit more vulnerable” to conditions such as Alzheimer's, Rush University neuropsychologist Robert Wilson, the author of the studies, says.

The expert however reveals that there is still hope for people at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. He explains that depression is not inevitable for these people. “It's not to say that people with Alzheimer's never have depression. We think they're as likely to have depression as they were before the disease,” he explains. The scientist adds that there are also methods of decreasing people's vulnerability to dementia, such as taking medication and exercising. “Diet and exercise seem to lessen the impact. So if we're on the right track here, there do seem to be tools that can blunt the vulnerability,” Wilson explains.