Association Between Cerebral Microbleeds and Depression in the General Elderly Population: A Meta-Analysis.

Background: It remains unclear whether cerebral microbleeds (CMBs) are associated with depression in the general elderly population. We thus performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the relationship between depression and CMBs.

Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted in EBSCO, PubMed, and Web of Science for relevant studies that assessed the relationship between depression and the prevalence of CMBs.

Results: Five eligible studies including 7,328 patients were pooled in meta-analysis. The prevalence of CMBs was 18.0%. The prevalence of depression was 11.1%. The pooled analysis demonstrated odds ratio for CMBs and depression to be 1.187 (95% confidence interval 1.005-1.403; p  = 0.043) with no evidence of statistical heterogeneity ( I 2  = 0.0%, p  = 0.621).

Conclusion: Our meta-analysis of available published data indicated an increased prevalence of depression in the subjects with pre-existing CMBs. This finding supports the vascular depression hypothesis. Further studies are needed to investigate the role of CMBs in the pathogenesis and progression of depression, which might provide a potential target for the prevention and treatment.