Tzang Ruu-Fen, Yang Albert C, Yeh Heng-Liang, Liu Mu-En, Tsai Shih-Jen
Department of Psychiatry, Mackay Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
Department of Psychiatry, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taiepi, Taiwan.
Med Sci Monit. 2015 Jan 9;21:100-4. doi: 10.12659/MSM.891086.
Loneliness and depression are very common in the aged population. Both have negative impacts on cognition in the elderly. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of loneliness and depression on total as well as specific cognitive domains in cognitively normal male subjects.
MATERIAL/METHODS: A total of 189 cognitively normal male subjects were recruited and underwent Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI) and Wechsler Digit Span Task tests. Depression was assessed by the Geriatric Depression Scale-Short Form (GDS-SF) and loneliness by UCLA loneliness scales. Partial correlation test was used to explore the correlation between loneliness/depression and total as well as specific cognition function, with the controlled factors of age and education.
Both depression and loneliness are negatively correlated with global cognitive function as evaluated with CASI (r=-0.227, p=0.002; r=-0.214, p=0.003, respectively). The domains of Attention, Orientation, Abstraction and judgment, and List-generating fluency of cognitive function were specifically associated with loneliness, and the domain of orientation was associated with depression after controlling the factors age and years of education.
Our findings suggest that loneliness and depression may have negative impacts on global and specific domains of cognitive function in non-demented elderly males. Both loneliness and depression should be actively recognized earlier and appropriately treated because they are significant sources of cognitive impairment in the elderly.
孤独和抑郁在老年人群中非常普遍。两者都对老年人的认知有负面影响。本研究旨在调查孤独和抑郁对认知正常男性受试者的整体以及特定认知领域的影响。
材料/方法：共招募了189名认知正常的男性受试者，他们接受了认知能力筛查工具（CASI）和韦氏数字广度任务测试。抑郁通过老年抑郁量表简表（GDS-SF）评估，孤独通过加州大学洛杉矶分校孤独量表评估。采用偏相关检验，在控制年龄和教育因素的情况下，探讨孤独/抑郁与整体以及特定认知功能之间的相关性。
抑郁和孤独与用CASI评估的整体认知功能均呈负相关（分别为r = -0.227，p = 0.002；r = -0.214，p = 0.003）。在控制年龄和受教育年限因素后，认知功能的注意力、定向、抽象和判断以及列举流畅性领域与孤独有特定关联，定向领域与抑郁有特定关联。
我们的研究结果表明，孤独和抑郁可能对非痴呆老年男性的整体和特定认知领域产生负面影响。孤独和抑郁都应尽早得到积极识别并进行适当治疗，因为它们是老年人认知障碍的重要来源。
