Hospitalized geriatric unipolar major depressives will be separated into three clinical groups based upon presence and type of delusions: mood-congruent delusional depressives; mood- incongruent delusional depressives; and depressives without delusions. Twenty-five subjects in each group and 25 controls will be compared for: pretreatment plasma cortisols and resistance to dexamethasone suppression; dopamine beta hydroxylase activity; and family risk for unipolar depression versus schizophrenia. Recovered subjects will be assessed for dopaminergic responses to dexamethasone. Reports suggesting that disturbances of hypothalamic-pituitary- adrenocortical functioning are exaggerated in elderly depressives, and that dopamine beta hydroxylase may decrease as a function of age are applied in the design; elderly unipolar depressives are studied to test the theory that hypercortisolemia resulting from the depressed state interacts with a trait for an excessive dopaminergic response to steroid stimulation in the pathogenesis of mood-congruent delusional depression.
| Meyers, B S; Alpert, S; Gabriele, M et al. (1993) State specificity of DST abnormalities in geriatric depression. Biol Psychiatry 34:108-14 |
| Meyers, B S; Mattis, S; Gabriele, M et al. (1991) Effects of nortriptyline on memory self-assessment and performance in recovered elderly depressives. Psychopharmacol Bull 27:295-9 |
