Source: Acta Obstet Gynecol Scand  |  Posted 9 years ago

Delusions and depression are strongly associated in Alzheimer's disease, and management of both of these conditions must be taken into account in patients with Alzheimer's.

Presence of depression conferred a 1.8-fold higher risk of delusions before researchers accounted for a range of potentially confounding factors in this study of patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States.

The risk increased further to 6.8-fold after these multiple other variables were considered.

Delusions in AD are strongly associated with depression even after statistical adjustment for all confounding variables, which might distort this association.

This finding has implications not only for understanding of the etio-pathogenesis of both delusions and depression but also for their management in AD patients, suggest these authors.

Medhat M. Bassiony from Zagazig University, Elsharkia, Egypt did this cross-sectional case-control investigation of the link between delusions and depression in AD patients with others at Johns Hopkins Neuropsychiatry Service and Copper Ridge Institute, Sykesville, Maryland.

Participants were 303 community-residing patients with probable AD by NINCDS/ADRDA criteria.

Seventy-five patients with delusions only were compared to a control group of 228 patients with neither delusions nor hallucinations. People with only hallucinations or both delusions and hallucinations were excluded from the study.

Researchers clinically assessed the patients for presence of delusions using the DSM-IV glossary definitions and also rated them on standardised measures of depression, cognitive impairment, staging of dementia, general medical health and functional impairment.