The role of plasma inflammatory markers in late-life depression and conversion to dementia: a 3-year follow-up study
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Late-life depression (LLD) has been linked to increased likelihood of dementia, although mechanisms responsible for this association remain largely unknown. One feature frequently observed in both LLD and dementia is elevated levels of plasma inflammatory markers. The present study aimed to compare the levels of 12 plasma inflammatory markers between older people with LLD and controls, and to explore whether these markers, along with clinical characteristics, can predict dementia in patients with LLD within 3 years of follow-up. Using multiple linear regression with stepwise adjustment, we compared levels of plasma inflammatory markers (IL-1β, IL-1ra, IL-6, IL-10, IL-17a, IL-18, IL-33, TNFα, CD40L, IFN-γ, CCL-2 and CCL-4) between 136 inpatients with LLD (PRODE cohort) and 103 cognitively healthy non-depressed controls (COGNORM cohort). In the PRODE cohort, follow-up data was available for 139 patients (of them 123 had data on baseline plasma inflammatory markers); 36 (25.9%) developed dementia by Year 3 (n = 31 for those with cytokine data). Using Cox proportional hazards regression, we explored whether inflammatory markers and clinical characteristics of LLD (age of onset, treatment response, number of episodes) predicted progression to dementia during follow-up. Levels of IL-1ra, CCL-2, CCL-4, IFN-γ and IL-17a were significantly higher in LLD patients compared to controls in the majority of models. However, none of the inflammatory markers predicted progression from LLD to dementia in the PRODE cohort. Among clinical features, only poor response to treatment significantly predicted higher risk of progression to dementia.
Date Issued
2025-07-01
Date Acceptance
2025-01-21
Citation
Molecular Psychiatry, 2025, 30 (7), pp.3029-3038
ISSN
1359-4184
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Start Page
3029
End Page
3038
Journal / Book Title
Molecular Psychiatry
Volume
30
Issue
7
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025 Open Access 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/.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/39922907
PII: 10.1038/s41380-025-02908-2
Subjects
Humans
Dementia
Disease Progression
Inflammation
Cytokines
Follow-Up Studies
Depression
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Female
Male
Biomarkers
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Date Publish Online
2025-02-08