Touron, Edelweiss;
de Flores, Robin;
Coulbault, Laurent;
Palix, Cassandre;
Chocat, Anne;
Kuhn, Elizabeth;
Landeau, Brigitte;
... Medit-Ageing Res Grp, Florence; + view all
(2025)
Depressive symptoms in older adults are associated with changes in stress-related markers, functional connectivity and brain volume.
Alzheimer's Research and Therapy
, 17
, Article 9. 10.1186/s13195-024-01643-0.
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Abstract
Background: Subclinical depressive symptoms increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The neurobiological mechanisms underlying this link may involve stress system dysfunction, notably related to the hippocampus which is particularly sensitive to AD. We aimed to investigate the links between blood stress markers and changes in brain regions involved in the stress response in older adults with or without subclinical depressive symptoms. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted using baseline data from the Age-Well trial. Cognitively unimpaired (CU) older adults with (DepS; n = 73) or without (NoDepS; n = 58) subclinical depressive symptoms (defined using the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale) were included in the analyses. Blood cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine were measured; as well as the resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) between, and gray matter (GM) volume of, the hypothalamus, hippocampus and hippocampal subfields. Blood stress markers levels and neuroimaging measures were compared between groups; then regression analyses were conducted between these measures. Results: DepS participants showed higher plasma epinephrine levels, which was associated with greater rs-FC between the CA1 and Subiculum hippocampal subfields and the hypothalamus. Lower GM volume in the CA1 and DG/CA2-3–4 subfields was also found in DepS. No between-group differences were observed for blood cortisol and norepinephrine. Conclusions: Our findings show that subclinical depressive symptoms are associated with increased sympatho-adrenomedullary axis activity, together with lower GM volume in a hippocampal subfield (i.e., CA1) particularly sensitive to AD. While causation cannot be inferred, these results suggest that screening and treating subclinical depressive symptoms in CU older adults could reduce AD risk. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02977819, Registration Date: 2016–11-25.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Depressive symptoms in older adults are associated with changes in stress-related markers, functional connectivity and brain volume |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s13195-024-01643-0 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s13195-024-01643-0 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Depressive symptoms, Aging, Cortisol, Catecholamines, Hypothalamus, Hippocampal subfelds |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Division of Psychiatry UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Division of Psychiatry > Mental Health of Older People |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10207465 |
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