Anti-Depressants to Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease
While your aging parent may be resistant to taking Prozac, depression appears to more than double the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, Dutch researchers report.
Depression has been linked to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s, and many doctors suspect that risk is tied to changes in the brain caused by depression. No one can figure out how or why depressed old people are likely, (2.5 times more likely) to develop Alzheimer’s disease than people who had never been depressed. (Yeah, like no one has never been depressed).
Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City admits that “Depression is also one of the side effects of dementia.” But Kennedy adds “So there is an overlap relationship that makes it very difficult to look at the more interesting question of whether, if we treat depression could we prevent dementia,”.
Even though the clinical implications for the association between depression and dementia aren’t clear, Kennedy believes that older people with depression should have their depression treated. “There’s even more reason to make sure depression is aggressively treated,” he said.
So if you can get your aging parent to start taking Prozac, you might just have them around a bit longer, and they might be a bit happier while they’re here.