| Back ground: The majority of studies about the cognitive function of depression have confirmed that the patients with depression exhibited general cognitive dysfunction, specially in short-term memory and executive-attention function. Many factors affect the cognitive function of depression, such as age, education level, and anti-depression drugs. Age is associated with progressive decline in cognitive function, it affect cognitive function by two ways, one is cognitive aging and the other is that advancing age is also associated with an increase in microvascular brain disease. So the severity and feature of cognitive dysfunction is different in patients with different age. But to now, few has systemic studied the cognitive function with different age.Objective:1. To explore the feature and severity of cognitive dysfunction in depression patients with different age.2. To provide assistant for the diagnosis and therapy of patients with depression.Methods:1. The study used a two-by-three factorial design, the subjects were grouped by diagnosis (depressed versus comparison) and by current age(young versus middle versus old; young=20-40yeas, middle=41-60yeas, old=61-80yeas). The six subject groups (young comparison, young depressed, middle comparison, middle depressed, old comparison, old depressed) were composed of 20 subjects each.2. We used Hamilton Rating Scales of Depression (HAMD) to assess the severity of depressive state.3. Winsconsin card sorting test, Trail making test and other neuropsychological tasks were used to measure the five domain (short-term memory, selective attention,sustained attention, inhibitory control, focused effort) of cognitive function in all subjects.Results:1. Short-term memory. MANOVA revealed the main effect on age and depressive state for this domain. A significant age effect was found in depressive subgroup, and the old depressed patients performed more poorly than the young and middle aged patients.2. Selective attention. MANOVA revealed a significant age-depression interaction and the main effect on age and depressive state for selective attention domain. A significant age effect was also found in depressive subgroup, and in keeping with short-term memory, the old depressed patients performed more worse than the young and middle aged patients.3. Sustained attention. Relative to the comparison subjects , the depressed patients performed more poorly on this domain.4. Inhibitory control. MANOVA revealed a significant age-depression interaction, age effect and depressive effect for this domain, and exhibited single effect of age in depressive and comparison subjects. The old subjects performed more worse than young and middle aged subjects.5. Focused effort. In keeping with the results from the inhibitory control tasks, MANOVA revealed a significant age-depression interaction, and the main effect on age and depressive state. Depressed and comparison subjects all exhibited the single effect on age for this domain.6. In all subgroups(young, middle and old), the patients with depression performed more poorly than the comparison for five domain.Conclusion:1. The patients with depression were associated with impairment in short-term memory, attention, and executive function.2. The old patients with depression performed more worse than young and middle aged patients for short-term memory.3. The cognitive dysfunction in old healthy subjects was mainly executive dysfunction, specially on working memory and set shifting.4. Relative to young and middle aged patients with depression, the executive dysfunction in late-onset depression were more serious . |
