Alexopoulos, P., Bountoulis, C., Katirtzoglou, E. et al. (17 more authors) (2025) The potential of depressive symptoms to identify cognitive impairment in ageing. European Journal of Ageing, 22 (1). 7. ISSN 1613-9372
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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, 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 changes were made. 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/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Geriatric depression scale; Adaptive boosting algorithm; Mild cognitive impairment; Dementia due Alzheimer’s disease |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > School of Medicine and Population Health |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 04 Mar 2025 15:44 |
Last Modified: | 04 Mar 2025 15:47 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10433-025-00837-1 |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:223957 |