The prevalence of clinically significant depressive symptoms in Alzheimer's disease: relationship with other psychological and behavioural symptoms.

摘要

An increasingly literature is available on depression and depressive symptoms in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The hypotheses explaining the occurrence of depression in AD (dAD) may be considered according to four main axes: an emotional reaction to cognitive decline, a recurrence of previous episodes of depression in the adult, vascular aetiology (vascular depression) or the neurodegenerative process which is itself causing the depressive symptoms (Lee and Lyketsos, 2003). We can estimate the dAD prevalence at around 20-40% (Arbus et al., 2003).