ArticleThe American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry2018
Apathy Mediates Cognitive Difficulties in Geriatric Depression.
Article in The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Apathy and Depression as Predictors of Activities of Daily Living Following Stroke and Traumatic Brain Injuries in Adults: A Meta-Analysis.Neuropsychology review · 2022Pooled it
- Trial
- Social Support and Depression Related to Older Adults' Hypertension Control in Rural China.The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry · 2019Trial
- Overactive Neuronal eEF2K/eEF2 signaling is associated with cognitive impairment and apathy-like behavior.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Suppression of neuronal eEF2K alleviates cognitive deficits and apathy-like behavior in APP/PS1 AD model mice.Research square · 2026Article
- Cellular heterogeneity and multicellular mechanisms in the pathogenesis of late-life depression: insights from single-cell and spatial multi-omics.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- Diminished Social and Leisure Engagement in Community Dwelling-Older Adults with Apathy.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Risk Factors Influencing Cognitive Function in Elderly Patients With Late-Life Depression: A Scoping Review.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- Mediating Role of Internet Use in Cognitive-Depressive Pathways: A Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Modeling Approach.International journal of public health · 2025Article
- Psychological predictors of incident subjective cognitive complaints in community dwelling older adults.Annals of medicine · 2024Article
- Stratifying Risk for Cognitive Decline in Older Adult Populations using the Geriatric Depression Scale.Journal of psychiatry and cognitive behaviour · 2024Article
- Cognitive, Disability, and Treatment Outcome Implications of Symptom-Based Phenotyping in Late-Life Depression.The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry · 2023Article
- The neural correlates of apathy in the context of aging and brain disorders: a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2023Review
- The indirect relationship between sleep and cognition in the PREVENT cohort: identifying targets for intervention.Frontiers in sleep · 2023Article
- Synergistic associations of depressive symptoms and aging on cognitive decline in early Parkinson's disease.Clinical parkinsonism & related disorders · 2023Article
- The neurobiology of apathy in depression and neurocognitive impairment in older adults: a review of epidemiological, clinical, neuropsychological and biological research.Translational psychiatry · 2022Review
- Mediation Analyses of the Role of Apathy on Motoric Cognitive Outcomes.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Apathy as a Within-Person Mediator of Depressive Symptoms and Cognition in Parkinson's Disease: Longitudinal Mediation Analyses.The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry · 2022Article
- Gut Microbiome Diversity and Abundance Correlate with Gray Matter Volume (GMV) in Older Adults with Depression.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Resilience as a Mediator of the Association between Spirituality and Self-Management among Older People with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveCognitive impairment associated with late-life depression can persist after remission of mood symptoms. Apathy, a common symptom of late-life depression, often leads to worse clinical outcomes. We examined if severity of apathy mediates cognitive difficulties in a cohort of older adults with major depression.
methodsOne hundred thirty-eight older adults with depression (54.4% female; mean [SD] age: 69.7 [7.4] years; mean [SD] education:15.6 [2.7] years) were recruited to participate in a treatment study, and only baseline data were analyzed. All participants received a comprehensive evaluation of depression, apathy, and cognition. We examined whether apathy mediated the relationship between depression and cognition, focusing our attention on memory and cognitive control. We then explored whether the mediation effects differed across women and men.
resultsIncreased apathy was significantly associated with worse depression and lower performance in the cognitive control domain but not in memory. Higher depressive scores were significantly associated with worse cognitive control but not memory. Mediation analyses revealed a significant indirect effect on cognitive control by depression through increased apathy scores with the mediator accounting for 21% of the total effect. Stratifying by sex, we found that women exhibited a significant indirect effect, with the mediator accounting for 47% of the total effect, whereas there was no mediation by apathy in men.
conclusionsThe findings imply that increased apathy mediates the relationship between cognition and depression. The identification of mediating effects may inform future treatment strategies and preventive interventions that can focus on decreasing apathy to improve cognition in late-life depression.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.