Association Between Depressive Symptoms and Cognitive Impairment in Patients Over 75 years of Age in the High Andean Communities of Peru

Malásquez-Diaz R.; Montalvo-Cabredo C.; Joo K.M.; La Torre H.L.; Ibañez A.E.; Gutierrez E.L.; Parodi J.F.; Runzer-Colmenares F.M. · Sage Open Aging (2025) · DOI: 10.1177/30495334251366009

Resumen

Objective: To determine the association between depressive symptoms and cognitive impairment in patients over 75 years of age in the High Andean communities of Peru. Patients and methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted. The sample consisted of 181 older adults. The Yesavage Test was used for depression screening (5-item version), and the Pfeiffer questionnaire was used for cognitive impairment screening. Poisson regression with robust variance was used to determine the association between variables with a 95% confidence level. The analyses were performed using STATA 16. Results: About 63.54% were female, with an average age of 79.52 ± 4.21 years. About 43.6% showed cognitive impairment, of which 29.8% were mild and 13.26% were moderate. An association was found between depression and cognitive impairment (p < .001; aPR = 4.70, 95% CI [2.25, 9.79]). Conclusion: There is an association between depressive symptoms and cognitive impairment in older adults from high Andean communities in Peru. © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Instituciones: Universidad Científica del Sur; Universidad Ricardo Palma; Universidad de San Martín de Porres; Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola