Callahan Brandy L, Joubert Sven, Tremblay Marie-Pier, Macoir Joël, Belleville Sylvie, Rousseau François, Bouchard Rémi W, Verret Louis, Hudon Carol
École de psychologie, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Québec, Quebec, Canada.
Département de psychologie, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal, Montreal, Canada.
J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol. 2015 Jun;28(2):108-16. doi: 10.1177/0891988714554708. Epub 2014 Oct 24.
Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and late-life depression (LLD) both increase the risk of developing Alzheimer disease (AD). Very little is known about the similarities and differences between these syndromes. The present study addresses this issue by examining the nature of semantic memory impairment (more precisely, object-based knowledge) in patients at risk of developing AD.
Participants were 17 elderly patients with aMCI, 18 patients with aMCI plus depressive symptoms (aMCI/D+), 15 patients with LLD, and 29 healthy controls. All participants were aged 55 years or older and were administered a semantic battery designed to assess semantic knowledge for 16 biological and 16 man-made items.
Overall performance of aMCI/D+ participants was significantly worse than the 3 other groups, and performance for questions assessing knowledge for biological items was poorer than for questions relating to man-made items.
This study is the first to show that aMCI/D+ is associated with object-based semantic memory impairment. These results support the view that semantic deficits in aMCI are associated with concomitant depressive symptoms. However, depressive symptoms alone do not account exclusively for semantic impairment, since patients with LLD showed no semantic memory deficit.
遗忘型轻度认知障碍（aMCI）和老年期抑郁症（LLD）都会增加患阿尔茨海默病（AD）的风险。对于这些综合征之间的异同，我们知之甚少。本研究通过检查有患AD风险的患者的语义记忆损害（更确切地说是基于物体的知识）的性质来解决这个问题。
参与者包括17名患有aMCI的老年患者、18名患有aMCI加抑郁症状的患者（aMCI/D+）、15名患有LLD的患者和29名健康对照者。所有参与者年龄均在55岁及以上，并接受了一组语义测试，旨在评估对16种生物和16种人造物品的语义知识。
aMCI/D+参与者的总体表现明显比其他三组差，评估生物物品知识的问题表现比与人造物品相关的问题更差。
本研究首次表明aMCI/D+与基于物体的语义记忆损害有关。这些结果支持了aMCI中的语义缺陷与伴随的抑郁症状相关的观点。然而，仅抑郁症状并不能完全解释语义损害，因为患有LLD的患者没有语义记忆缺陷。
