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Depression is a worldwide health problem and elderly people are the most vulnerable group to it. This is probably due to factors related to aging or the loss of skills and the decrease of activities. It is estimated that about 10% to 20% of elderly people in the world live with depression and this affects their health and life itself.
There are several scales to identify depression in elderly people. The most widely used is the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) which can be used in hospital and community environment. For rapid assessment, there are four-item versions (GDS-4) and five-item versions (GDS-5).
In this regard, a group of researchers including David Soriano Moreno, a student of the Professional School of Medicine of the Universidad Peruana Unión published the article entitled «Accuracy of the Geriatric Depression Scale GDS-4 and GDS-5 for the screening of depression among older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis» in which a systematic review was conducted with the aim of evaluating the accuracy of the GDS-4 and GDS-5 versions.
The study summarizes the sensitivity and specificity of GDS-4 and GDAS-5 for the detection of depression in elderly people.
For this purpose, twenty-three studies were analyzed and eleven versions of different GDS were evaluated. The number of participants was 5,048.
As part of his conclusions, he mentions that the results had a great heterogeneity in the estimation of sensitivity and specificity which suggests that some versions may be more accurate than others.
The results would help to guide clinical practice and the clinical guideline recommendations.
The article was published in the Journal PLOS ONE, a prestigious journal ranked Q1 in Scopus.
Congratulations to the UPeU researcher student for this great contribution!
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