PREMORBID HISTORY OF MAJOR DEPRESSION AND THE DEPRESSIVE SYNDROME OF ALZHEIMERS-DISEASE

To test the hypothesis that primary degenerative dementia of the Alzhe imer type (PDD-AT) may increase the likelihood of expression of a life time vulnerability to the development of depression, the authors compa red the premorbid rates of major depression in psychiatric inpatients with dementia, with or without a concurrent syndrome of depression. A premorbid history of major depression was four times more common in pa tients with the depressive syndrome of PDD-AT than in PDD-AT patients without depression. The authors discuss the significance of these find ings for pathophysiologic models and estimates of comorbidity of depre ssion in PDD-AT.