Cognitive deficits of the elderly with depression and 1 H-MRS changes in its frontal lobe and hippocampus / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the features of cognitive deficits of elderly depression,to evaluate the metabolite changes using MRS,and to assess the correlation between abnormal metabolite ratio of MRS and the scores of MoCA.Methods The samples contained 20 elderly depression patients and 20 healthy controls.All the patients were assessed by Montreal Cognitive Assessment(MoCA).MRS data were acquired by point-resolved echo spin spectroscopy(PRESS)sequence of single vowel 1-hydrogen MRS.The software automatically completed metabolite content measurement,giving the ratio of all metabolite using Cr as reference,including NAA/Cr,Cho/Cr.Results (1)Compared with the controls,the patients depressed had lower scores in attention,executive function,words,delayed recall and total scores(P0.01);(3)The scores in executive function(r=0.71,0.62),words(r=0.79,0.77),delayed recall(r=0.62,0.61)and total scores(r=0.72,0.68)correlated with NAA/Cr in frontal lobe,the scores in delayed recall correlated with NAA/Cr in hippocampus(r=0.81,0.76).Conclusions The cognition function of patients with elderly depression can be generally impaired.The patients depressed had lower ratio of NAA/Cr in both frontal lobe and hippocampus.The cognitive deficits of geriatric depression correlated 1H-MRS changes in its frontal lobe and hippocampus.