Abstract
Background: Although apathy is a common symptom in late-life depression, the treatment effect of antidepressant on apathy in those patients is still unclear. The aim of the present study is to reveal the difference of treatment response on apathy among the class of antidepressant.
Methods: A total of 128 elderly inpatients (>or=60 years old) with a DSM-IV major depressive disorder were recruited from Juntendo Koshigaya Hospital. Patients showing clinical evidence of dementia or with mini-mental state examination (MMSE) scores <24 were excluded. Finally 92 elderly patients were treated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI, n=52) and serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI, n=40). We evaluated depressive symptom using Hamilton Depression Scale (HAM-D) and apathy using the Apathy Evaluation Scale Japanese version (AES-J) before and after 4 weeks treatment. Responder was defined as the patients with 50 percent improvement of each score by treatment.
Result: There are no significant differences between SSRI and SNRI on responder rates of HAM-D and AES-J scores.
Conclusion: The treatment response on apathy in patients with late-life depression was not different according to the class of antidepressant. The results with a larger dataset will be reported in the congress.