Original ArticleWhite Matter Lesions as a Predictor of Depression in the Elderly: The 3C-Dijon Study
Section snippets
Sample
The Three City (3C) Study is a multicenter cohort study, conducted in three French cities (Bordeaux, Dijon, and Montpellier) and designed to estimate dementia risk attributable to vascular factors. A sample of noninstitutionalized subjects aged 65 years and older was randomly selected from the electoral rolls of each city. Between January 1999 and March 2001, 9294 subjects were enrolled (Bordeaux, n = 2104; Dijon, n = 4931; Montpellier, n = 2259). The detailed description of the study protocol
Results
The study sample at baseline is described in Table 1. Mean age of participants was 72.4 years (SD =4.1), and 60.6% of participants were women. Prevalence of LMD was 14.5%, and 13.1% of subjects had high depressive symptoms.
Factors associated with LMD are also shown in Table 1. LMD prevalence was higher in women. Mean age did not differ significantly between subjects with LMD (72.7 years; SD = 4.0) and subjects without (72.4 years; SD = 4.1), p = .20. Alcohol and tobacco consumptions were
Discussion
In this study of elderly subjects, WML severity was associated with lifetime major depression. Cross-sectional analyses showed that subjects with LMD had a mean volume of WML significantly higher than subjects without LMD. The plausibility of this association was strengthened by the longitudinal analyses, which showed that the progression of WML volume over 4-year follow-up was significantly higher in subjects with LMD at baseline.
Our cross-sectional findings are in line with most studies in
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