Estudo da associação entre síndrome da fragilidade e depressão

Abstract

The demographic transition has been evidenced in Brazil since the 40's, however, from the 70's this phenomenon has been growing and being more studied and researched. Due to sociocultural, political and economic demands, science seeks to understand the various aspects connected to aging. Thus, studies which aim to evidence factors associated or correlated to a particular complaint in elderly have increased. Depression in this population segment has been considered an important theme by adding philosophical and bio-psychological nuances, relating from the suffering of the proximity of the end of life to the high prevalence of chronic non-communicable diseases. It is known that depression is a disease with psychic and physical symptomatology, originated from changes in neurotransmitter, as well as inflammatory changes. Moreover, it is related to the loss of autonomy and incapacities, falls and hospitalizations, decreasing the quality of life. In addition to depression, the fragility syndrome has been increasingly studied, including its strong impact on the elderly. The objective herein was to study the association between the indicators of frailty and depression in the elderly, evaluating the magnitude through the prevalence ratios (PR). This is a cross-sectional study, derived from a multicenter study - FIBRA Network (Fragility in Brazilian Elderly People) - in a municipality in the northeast of Brazil. A sample of elderly individuals over 65 years old who scored above the cutoff point on cognitive examination was used. Poisson bivariate analysis was used as well as multivariate analysis. It was observed that socio-demographic characteristics such as being widowed and not being literate have a significant association with depressive symptoms. Among the indicators of fragility, weight loss, fatigue and lack of physical activity presented p less than 0.05. Therefore, there was overlap between depressive symptoms and indicators of frailty, which raises the conjecture about the adequacy of only physical indicators being used for the ascertainment of fragility, without the inclusion of an indicator that evaluates affective aspects. It is noticed that many studies still need to be performed, especially with methodology that allows inference of causality.