MRI lesion severity and mortality in geriatric depression.

Objective: The authors correlated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) lesion severity and mortality among depressed elderly patients.

Methods: They examined the association of mortality and deep white-matter hyperintensity (DWMH), periventricular hyperintensity (PVH), and subcortical gray-matter hyperintensity (SGH) ratings in 259 subjects.

Results: DWMH and PVH were significantly associated with mortality initially, and, in final modeling, DWMH remained significant.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that there is a relationship between cerebrovascular disease severity and mortality among depressed patients. More studies, with larger sample sizes, comparing depressed patients and control subjects are needed to further elucidate this relationship.