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Dementia; common cause of suicide among elderly?

Elderly committing suicide can be in a “preclinical phase” of dementia. Depressive symptoms may indicate a risk to develop a disease of dementia, for example Alzheimer’s Disease. Today almost 10% of the Swedish population older than 65 years suffer from a cognitive impairment diagnosed as dementia. Symptoms of dementia are associated with degenerative changes in the brain caused by a deposition of amyloid, leading among others things to a nerve cell death. A clinical diagnosis can be hard to set, and a definitive diagnose can only be set after a pathological examination, which only is possible after death. For this study we used Congo red staining of brains sections to find amyloid in autopsies from elderly people committing suicide. 35 cases (>60 year) were studied. Of the 35 cases 1/3 showed to be positive for amyloid deposition. This result in addition to other studies suggest that depressive symptoms is a “preclinical phase” of dementia, and therefore the suicide risk for this group must be consider to be elevated. However, more reliable prospective studies most be done to confirm this retrospective study.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-7164
Date January 2006
CreatorsAndersson, Frida
PublisherUppsala universitet, Institutionen för medicinsk biokemi och mikrobiologi, Uppsala : Universitetsbiblioteket
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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