Latin American Older people and neuropsychiatric symptoms: a mini-systematic review of effects of COVID-19 Pandemic.

BACKGROUND

Ending December 2019, the world had to face to COVID-19. Latin America and the Caribbean suffered the effects where the contiguous and the number of deaths has been significant. Studies indicate that older adults with some degree of cognitive impairment are at greater risk of worsening their cognitive status and mental health, for this reason it's exposed that social isolation and loneliness has harmful effects on the health of this population. This mini-review inquires on the effects of COVID-19 due to social isolation on neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) in Latin American older adults with and without dementia.

METHOD

A search was carried out in PubMed, SCOPUS, and ScienceDirect identifying all articles published up to July 31, 2021 using the keywords "social isolation", "lockdown", "quarantine", "COVID-19",, "neuropsychiatric symptoms ", "neurobehavioral", "dementia"," mild cognitive impairment "," Older People ", "aging", "elderly". Two independent reviewers screened and selected appropriate articles and a third researcher helped resolve disagreements. The selected articles met the following criteria: written in English, Spanish or Portuguese, original article; focused on elderly subjects, articles that provided information on the NPS effects in Latin American populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The review was based on the PRISMA Statement and used the SIGN criteria.

RESULT

From 61 articles recovered from electronic databases (PubMed, Science Direct and Scopus) 10 of them were chosen for this review. The majority of the articles reported in a general way a negative impact on the mental health of the population in Latin America. They referred to a significant increase in the anxiety and depression symptoms. The majority of the articles were studies developed in Brazil, Argentina and Chile.

CONCLUSION

The COVID-19 has shown a negative impact on the mental health of older adults. Latin America is a region with important socio-sanitary problems which increase the impact of the pandemic in SNP, especially in older adults. It's necessary to increase the studies in Latin America that glimpse the real situation in the region.

Informations de copyright

© 2021 the Alzheimer's Association.