Depression and Alzheimer's Disease

Filed in archive Alzheimer's Disease , Mental Maladies , Studies on April 10, 2008

© chez_sugi


As recently reported by Neurology® - the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology - people who have or had depression are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than those that never had a brush with depression at all.

The study involved 486 people age 60 to 90 who had no dementia. Of those, 134 people had experienced at least one episode of depression that prompted them to seek medical advice.

One theory was that depression leads to loss of cells in two areas of the brain, the hippocampus and the amygdala, which then contributes to Alzheimer's disease. But this study found no difference in the size of these two brain areas between people with depression and people who had never had depression.

Well...don't we all get some kind of depression at one point in our lives? ;-)

Find more details from EurekAlert.