Abstract
Abstract Objective Worsening cognitive status has been related to depression in older adults. The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between cognitive status and depression and whether this relation was dependent upon tau levels, a biomarker for brain pathology related to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other dementias. Method This study consisted of 507 older adults with a mean age of 74. Participants were 40.9% female and 93.9% Caucasian. Neuropsychological assessments, collateral report, and clinician ratings were used to classify each participant by their cognitive status (i.e., cognitively normal (CN), early mild cognitive impairment (MCI), late MCI, or AD). Depression was based on the total score of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). A hierarchical multiple regression was used to analyze the amount of variance explained in depression scores, controlling for age. Results There was a significant relation between cognitive status and GDS, with cognitive status explaining 2.8% of the variance (R-squared = .028, p < .001). Tau explained .6% of the variance in depression scores above and beyond what was explained by cognitive status and age (p = .089). The interaction between cognitive status and tau explained .4% of the variance in depression scores, ΔR-squared = .004, p = .160. Conclusions While this suggests cognitive status and depression may not be dependent upon tau levels in this sample, further research should be done to determine whether other sensitive measures of brain pathology, such as the ratio between phosphorylated tau and total tau, may be relevant in the prediction and diagnosis of depression in individuals with varying levels of cognitive status.
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