Elderly people who have symptoms of depression and moderate or severe joint pain tend to show faster cognitive decline, especially in the area of memory. This was shown by a study published in the journal Aging & Mental Health . The conclusions are based on data from 4,718 participants aged 50 and older who were followed up over 12 years.
The authors of the article include researchers from the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in Brazil and University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom. "Both pain and symptoms of depression act on areas of the brain [mainly the hippocampus] associated with cognitive processing. Therefore, there's an overlap of information, causing the brain to become 'congested' and to delegate some functions to process the pain response and the symptoms of depression.
This would interfere with formation of memory and global cognitive performance. "in the study, we saw that over the years, this overload leads to faster cognitive decline ," says Patrícia Silva Tofani, researcher in the Gerontology Program at UFSCar and professor at the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS). The study participants are part of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA Study), which collects multidisciplinary data from a representative sample of the British population and is part of the International Collaboration of Longitudinal Studies of Aging (InterCoLAgeing)—an international consortium coordinated by Tiago da Silva Alexandre, professor in the Departm.