The potential of depressive symptoms to identify cognitive impairment in ageing

Panagiotis Alexopoulos (), Christos Bountoulis, Everina Katirtzoglou, Mary H. Kosmidis, Kostas Siarkos, Mary Yannakoulia, Efthimios Dardiotis, Maria Skondra, Georgios Hadjigeorgiou, Robert Perneczky, Paraskevi Sakka, Eleni-Zacharoula Georgiou, Μarina Charalampopoulou, Panagiotis Felemegkas, Iracema Leroi, Apostolos Batsidis, Laura Perna, Antonios Politis, Nikolaos Scarmeas and Polychronis Economou
Additional contact information
Panagiotis Alexopoulos: Mental Health Services, Patras University General Hospital, University of Patras
Christos Bountoulis: University of Piraeus
Everina Katirtzoglou: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Mary H. Kosmidis: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Kostas Siarkos: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Mary Yannakoulia: Harokopio University
Efthimios Dardiotis: University of Thessaly
Maria Skondra: Mental Health Services, Patras University General Hospital, University of Patras
Georgios Hadjigeorgiou: University of Thessaly
Robert Perneczky: University Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich
Paraskevi Sakka: Athens Association of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders
Eleni-Zacharoula Georgiou: Mental Health Services, Patras University General Hospital, University of Patras
Μarina Charalampopoulou: Mental Health Services, Patras University General Hospital, University of Patras
Panagiotis Felemegkas: Mental Health Services, Patras University General Hospital, University of Patras
Iracema Leroi: Trinity College Dublin
Apostolos Batsidis: University of Ioannina
Laura Perna: Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry
Antonios Politis: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Nikolaos Scarmeas: Eginition Hospital, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School
Polychronis Economou: University of Patras

European Journal of Ageing, 2025, vol. 22, issue 1, No 7, 11 pages

Abstract: Abstract Depressive symptoms are common in mild cognitive impairment (MCI), dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease (AD dementia) and in cognitively unimpaired older adults. However, it is unclear whether they could contribute to the identification of cognitive impairment in ageing. To assess the potential utility of depressive symptoms to distinguish between healthy cognitive ageing and MCI and AD dementia. The diagnostic workup of the cognitive function of 1737 older cognitively unimpaired individuals, 334 people with MCI and 142 individuals with AD dementia relied on a comprehensive neuropsychiatric assessment, including the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). Depressive symptoms were tapped with the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). Proportional odds logistic regression (POLR) models and the machine learning technique Adaptive Boosting algorithm (AdaBoost) were employed. Stratified repeated random subsampling (stratified bootstrap resampling) was used to recursive partitioning to training- and validation set (70/30 ratio). The average accuracy of the POLR models for the GDS total score in distinguishing between cognitive impairment and healthy cognitive ageing exceeded 78% and was inferior to that of MMSE. Of note, the sensitivity of GDS total score was very low. By employing the AdaBoost algorithm and considering GDS items separately, the average accuracy was higher than 0.72 and comparable to that of the MMSE, while sensitivity- and specificity values were more balanced. The findings of the study provide initial evidence that depressive symptoms may contribute to distinguishing between cognitive impairment and cognitively healthy ageing.

Keywords: Geriatric depression scale; Adaptive boosting algorithm; Mild cognitive impairment; Dementia due Alzheimer’s disease (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10433-025-00837-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eujoag:v:22:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10433-025-00837-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... iences/journal/10433

DOI: 10.1007/s10433-025-00837-1

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Ageing is currently edited by Marja Aartsen, Susanne Iwarsson and Prof. Dr. Matthias Kliegel

More articles in European Journal of Ageing from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().