Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 55, Issue 1 P47-P53, Copyright © 2000 by The Gerontological Society of America
Relationships between mood and estradiol (E2) levels in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients
LE Carlson, BB Sherwin and HM Chertkow
Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. [email protected]
This study investigates the relationship between mood and estradiol (E2)
levels and assesses the prevalence of mood symptoms in Alzheimer's disease
(AD) patients compared to healthy elderly controls. Fifty-two AD patients
(26 men, 23 estrogen non-using women and three estrogen- using women), mean
age 76.2 years, were recruited and assessed with the Geriatric Depression
Scale (GDS), a test of mood, and a radioimmunoassay measure of E2 levels at
the time of testing. The AD patients were compared to a control group of
age and gender-matched healthy elderly men and women estrogen-users and
non-users. No differences were found between the AD patients and the
controls in overall E2 levels, but, as expected, the women estrogen-users
in both the AD and control groups had higher E2 levels than the men and the
female estrogen non-users. Both groups of men had higher E2 levels than the
estrogen non-using women. There was a significant negative correlation
between E2 levels and GDS scores in the full sample, which was particularly
strong in the estrogen-using women. This indicates that those subjects with
higher E2 levels had less mood symptomatology. Overall, mood scores in the
AD patients were higher than in the healthy controls, indicating higher
levels of depressive symptomatology; the highest depression scores occurred
in the AD women who were estrogen non-users. This suggests that depressive
symptoms are common in AD patients, and that women with AD who are not
taking estrogen replacement may be especially vulnerable to depression.
