Prevalence of neuropsychiatric conditions in two parallel, aging study cohorts from rural and urban India

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundNeuropsychiatric conditions occur more frequently among elderly. With rising proportion of elderly in India, the burden due to neuropsychiatric disorders is bound to escalate. Many of these disorders have been associated with dementia, though the relationship is complex.MethodPrevalence of neuropsychiatric conditions, such as stroke, head injury, depression and early‐life stress were assessed in two parallel, longitudinal, aging cohorts, from rural and urban India, namely, the Srinivaspura Aging Neurosenescence and COGnition (SANSCOG) study and Tata Longitudinal Study of Aging (TLSA), respectively. As part of their baseline clinical assessments, subjects from both cohorts were screened for depression using the self‐rated, Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and the clinician‐rated, Hamilton’s Depression Rating Scale (HDRS). Past history of depression and history of early life stressors, such as parental death and parental divorce in childhood were obtained. Self‐reported history of stroke, head injury and risk for vascular dementia using Hatchinski’s Ischemic Index (HIS) were also assessed.ResultProportion of subjects diagnosed with depression using GDS was 9.77% in the rural and 9.66% in the urban cohort, whereas corresponding numbers using HDRS were 6.55% and 3.82%, with female preponderance in both cohorts. Proportion of subjects with past history of depression was 4.82% and 5.07% in the rural and urban cohorts, respectively. Early life parental death was more in the rural 10.91%) as compared with the urban cohort (3.66%). History of stroke was reported in 1.25% and 2.31% of the rural and urban cohorts, respectively. There was no significant difference in proportion of subjects with history of head injury between the rural (4.16%) and urban (4.77%) cohorts. In the rural cohort, 0.23% scored above the threshold for vascular dementia on HIS, whereas none of the subjects scored above the threshold in the urban cohort.ConclusionGDS is a more sensitive tool than HDRS at screening for depression in elderly. Neuropsychiatric conditions such as history of stroke, head injury and risk for vascular dementia did not show any consistent trend of variation between both the cohorts. Further longitudinal assessments of these neuropsychiatric conditions along with parallel monitoring of cognitive changes will help in identifying their causal relationship with dementia.