Antidepressant Response in the Treatment of Depressive Symptoms and Frailty Characteristics in Older Adults

Phase 4

Completed

Conditions: Dysthymic Disorder
Depressive Disorder, NOS
Major Depressive Disorder

Interventions: Drug: Antidepressant Medication

Registration Number: NCT01973283

Lead Sponsor: New York State Psychiatric Institute

Brief Summary: The goal of this open-administration treatment study of citalopram (or duloxetine) is to evaluate the effect of antidepressant medication on treating the syndrome of "frailty" in older adults with depressive symptoms. Patients with significant depressive symptoms (defined as CES-D (Center for Epidemiological Studies - Depression scale) \> 10) and 1 or more symptoms of the frailty syndrome (exhaustion, decreased energy, weight loss, decreased grip strength, and slow/unsteady gait) will be evaluated and treated with citalopram (or duloxetine) for 8 weeks to test whether antidepressant medication improves both the syndrome of frailty and depressive symptoms. Patients evaluated at the Adult and Late Life Depression clinic and eligible to participate in the study will be treated with an antidepressant medication and assessed on the primary outcome variables (characteristics of frailty, depressive symptoms) as well as on secondary variables which include cognition (global cognition, episodic memory, executive function), and function (physical mobility, instrumental activities of daily living, and social functioning) prior to treatment initiation and following 8-weeks of treatment. The hypotheses for this protocol predict that we will discover a significant improvement on both frailty characteristics and depressive symptoms in this clinical population when treated with antidepressant medication (citalopram or duloxetine).

Detailed Description: Frailty, "a syndrome of decreased resiliency and reserves", is defined by five characteristics: 1)"shrinking" (definition: unintentional weight loss of \> 10 lbs in prior year, or \> 5% loss of body weight in prior year at follow-up), 2) weakness (definition: grip strength in lowest 20% at baseline, adjusted for gender and BMI), 3) poor endurance/energy (definition: self-report of exhaustion on 2 items on the CES-D), 4) slowness (definition: slowest 20% on timed 4 meter or 15 foot walk, adjusted for gender and standing height), and 5) low physical activity (definition: weighted score of kilocalories expended per week as calculated from the Minnesota Leisure Time Activity questionnaire). Frailty is associated with poor prognosis including hospitalization, falls, worsening disability and mobility, and death.

Data from the Cardiovascular Health Study document the rate of comorbid depressive symptoms in frail older adults (16.2% of older adults with at least 1 frailty characteristic had a CES-D \> 10, including 31% of older adults with 3 or more frailty characteristics, compared to 2.6% of nonfrail older adults) despite study exclusion of individuals who were taking an antidepressant (this is in part why we chose to include patients with a CES-D of \> 10, rather than requiring a diagnosis of a depressive disorder such as major depression or dysthymia for this study). The relationship between frailty and depression however goes beyond this association; the five defining characteristics of frailty (exhaustion, decreased energy, weight loss, decreased grip strength, and slow/unsteady gait) overlap significantly with symptoms of geriatric depression (decreased energy and motivation, psychomotor slowing, weight loss, decreased participation in leisure activities).

The proposed study is innovative in that it is focuses on a group of older adults who have been unrepresented (via exclusion criteria) in previous clinical studies (frail older adults with comorbid depressive symptoms), and it treats the comorbid depressive symptoms and targets characteristics of the frailty syndrome in the hopes of altering the prognostic trajectory of this clinical sample. This protocol serves two purposes: 1. It tests the feasibility of recruiting and retaining frail older adults with depressive symptoms in a treatment trial, and 2. It provides pilot data for the effectiveness of an antidepressant medication on treating the characteristics of frailty and the comorbid depressive symptoms.

Recruitment & Eligibility

Status: COMPLETED

Sex: All

Target Recruitment: 100

Inclusion Criteria

Anyone with 1 or more characteristics of frailty
HRSD>16 and a DSM-IV depressive disorder (e.g. MDD, Dysthymia)
Capable of providing informed consent
Currently followed by a PCP (had an eval in last 6-months)

Exclusion Criteria

Acute cancer treatment
Acute, severe or unstable medical illness
End stage medical illness (e.g. liver, kidney, pulmonary)
Mini Mental Exam < 24 or a diagnosis of dementia
Individuals who do not have capacity to consent
Diagnosis of substance abuse or dependence (last 12 months), excluding Nicotine dependence
History of psychosis or psychotic disorder or bipolar disorder
Patient is considered a significant risk of suicide
Subject is considered based on history to be unlikely to respond to the single agent antidepressant (i.e., subjects with treatment resistant depression, including subjects with previous treatment with ECT)
History of allergic or adverse reaction to escitalopram or duloxetine, or non-response to adequate trial of escitalopram (at least 4 weeks at dose of 20 mg) or duloxetine (at least 4 weeks at dose of 90mg).

Study & Design

Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL

Study Design: SINGLE_GROUP

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Medication Treatment	Antidepressant Medication	Participants are treated with a flexible-dose antidepressant medication for a period of 8 weeks.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HRSD)	12 Months	Measure Description: Our target is depressive symptomatology as measured by the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD). The HRSD is a 24-item questionnaire used as an indication of depression and a guide to evaluating recovery. Total scores range from 0-74, not including atypical symptoms sub-scale. A score above 16 is typically considered to indicate the presence of depressive symptoms. Higher scores indicate greater severity.
Hamilton Depression Rating Scale: Stratified by Baseline Frailty	Month 12	Measure Description: Our target is depressive symptomatology as measured by the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD). The HRSD is a 24-item questionnaire used as an indication of depression and a guide to evaluating recovery. Total scores range from 0-74, not including atypical symptoms sub-scale. A score above 16 is typically considered to indicate the presence of depressive symptoms. Higher scores indicate greater severity.
Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD)	6 Months	Measure Description: Our target is depressive symptomatology as measured by the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD). The HRSD is a 24-item questionnaire used as an indication of depression and a guide to evaluating recovery. Total scores range from 0-74, not including atypical symptoms sub-scale. A score above 16 is typically considered to indicate the presence of depressive symptoms. Higher scores indicate greater severity.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
World Health Organization Disability Assessment 2.0 (36-item)--Stratified by Baseline Frailty	Month 12	Assesses the level of functioning of patients, a component of the frailty evaluation. The scores assigned to each of the items: "none" (0), "mild" (1) "moderate" (2), "severe" (3), and "extreme" (4) - are summed. Each of the items is simply added up without recoding or collapsing of response categories; thus, there is no weighting of individual items. As a result, the simple sum of the scores of the items across all domains constitutes a statistic that is sufficient to describe the degree of functional limitations. Step 1 - Summing of recoded item scores within each domain. Step 2 - Summing of all six domain scores. Step 3 - Converting the summary score into a metric ranging from 0 to 100 (where 0 = no disability; 100 = full disability).
World Health Organization Disability Assessment 2.0 (36-item)	12 Months	Assesses the level of functioning of patients, a component of the frailty evaluation. The scores assigned to each of the items: "none" (0), "mild" (1) "moderate" (2), "severe" (3), and "extreme" (4) - are summed. Each of the items is simply added up without recoding or collapsing of response categories; thus, there is no weighting of individual items. As a result, the simple sum of the scores of the items across all domains constitutes a statistic that is sufficient to describe the degree of functional limitations. Step 1 - Summing of recoded item scores within each domain. Step 2 - Summing of all six domain scores. Step 3 - Converting the summary score into a metric ranging from 0 to 100 (where 0 = no disability; 100 = full disability).