• Melanie Luppa, Tobias Luck, Franziska Ritschel, Matthias C Angermeyer, Arno Villringer, and Steffi G Riedel-Heller.
• Institute of Social Medicine, Occupational Health and Public Health, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany. Melanie.Luppa@medizin.uni-leipzig.de
• Plos One. 2013 Jan 1;8(3):e59246.

AimsThe aim of the study was to investigate the impact of depression (categorical diagnosis; major depression, MD) and depressive symptoms (dimensional diagnosis and symptom patterns) on incident dementia in the German general population.MethodsWithin the Leipzig Longitudinal Study of the Aged (LEILA 75+), a representative sample of 1,265 individuals aged 75 years and older were interviewed every 1.5 years over 8 years (mean observation time 4.3 years; mean number of visits 4.2). Cox proportional hazards and binary logistic regressions were used to estimate the effect of baseline depression and depressive symptoms on incident dementia.ResultsThe incidence of dementia was 48 per 1,000 person-years (95% confidence interval (CI) 45-51). Depressive symptoms (Hazard ratio HR 1.03, 95% CI 1.01-1.05), and in particular mood-related symptoms (HR 1.08, 95% CI 1.03-1.14), showed a significant impact on the incidence of dementia only in univariate analysis, but not after adjustment for cognitive and functional impairment. MD showed only a significant impact on incidence of dementia in Cox proportional hazards regression, but not in binary logistic regression models.DiscussionThe present study using different diagnostic measures of depression on future dementia found no clear significant associations of depression and incident dementia. Further in-depth investigation would help to understand the nature of depression in the context of incident dementia.

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