CORRESPONDENCE

Executive dysfunction and depressive symptoms in cerebrovascular disease

G Bellelli¹, E Lucchi¹, G Cipriani², G B Frisoni³ and M Trabucchi⁴

¹ "Ancelle della Carità" Hospital, Cremona, and Geriatric Research Group, Brescia, Italy
² Geriatric Research Group, Brescia, Italy
³ Laboratory of Epidemiology and Neuroimaging IRCCS "San Giovanni di Dio Fatebenefratelli", Brescia, and Geriatric Research Group, Brescia, Italy
⁴ Geriatric Research Group, Brescia, and University "Tor Vergata", Roma, Italy

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr G Bellelli, "Ancelle della Carità" Hospital, via Aselli 14, 26100 Cremona, Italy;
bellelli-giuseppe@poliambulanza.it

Keywords: executive dysfunction; depressive symptoms; cerebrovascular disease; executive dysfunction; depressive symptoms; cerebrovascular disease

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The article by Kramer et al¹ suggests that subcortical ischaemic vascular disease is associated with subtle declines in executive functioning and visual memory, even in non-demented patients. The authors compared 27 control subjects and 12 non-demented patients, who were selected after exclusion of major depression, bipolar affective disorder, and other DSM-IV I axis disorders. We wish to contribute with personal data to this topic suggesting that, even in absence of a clinical diagnosis of depression, depressive symptoms may modulate executive dysfunctions in non-demented subjects with cerebrovascular disease.

We examined 34 consecutive patients with cognitive impairment-no dementia (CI-ND) (mean (SD), age: 78.1 (6.3), range 65–90; years of education: 4.9 (1.7), range 3–10; Mini Mental State Examination score: 24.0 (2.4), range 18–27). The diagnosis of CI-ND was made on the basis of a standardised multidimensional protocol including history, clinical examination, detailed neuropsychological testing, and computed tomography. The presence and severity of cortical, . . . [Full text of this article]

J Kramer⁵

⁵ University of California San Francisco, Department of Psychiatry and Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, 401 Parnassus Avenue, Box PAC-0984, San Francisco, CA 94143–0984; kramer@itsa.ucsf.edu

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