Prediction of depressive symptoms at high age (80+) by psychological, biological and functional factors

Late-life depression (LLD) is highly prevalent, especially in people aged 80 years and older. We aimed to investigate predictors and their influence on depressive symptoms in LLD. We analysed data from the NRW80+ study, a population-based cross-sectional study of individuals aged 80 years and older. Data from n = 926 cognitively unimpaired participants were included. We reduced 95 variables to 21 predictors of depressive symptoms by using a two-step cluster analysis (TSCA), which were assigned to one of four factors (function, values and lifestyle, autonomy and contentment, biological-somatic) according to a principal component analysis. A second TSCA with complete data sets (n = 879) was used to define clusters of participants. Using weighted mean composite scores (CS) for each factor group, binary logistic regression analyses were performed to predict depressive symptoms for each cluster and the total population. The second TSCA yielded two clusters (cluster 1 (n = 688), cluster 2 (n = 191)). The proportion of participants with depressive symptoms was significantly higher in cluster 2 compared to cluster 1 (39 % vs. 15 %; OR = 3.6; 95 % CI 2.5–5.1; p