Research Article A Low-Cost Point-of-Care Testing System for Psychomotor Symptoms of Depression Affecting Standing Balance: A Preliminary Study in India

Copyright © 2013 Arindam Dutta et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The World Health Organization estimated that major depression is the fourth most significant cause of disability worldwide for people aged 65 and older, where depressed older adults reported decreased independence, poor health, poor quality of life, functional decline, disability, and increased chronic medical problems. Therefore, the objectives of this study were (1) to develop a low-cost point-of-care testing system for psychomotor symptoms of depression and (2) to evaluate the system in community dwelling elderly in India. The preliminary results from the cross-sectional study showed a significant negative linear correlation between balance and depression. Here, monitoring quantitative electroencephalography along with the center of pressure for cued response time during functional reach tasks may provide insights into the psychomotor symptoms of depression where average slope of the Theta-Alpha power ratio versus average slope of baseline-normalized response time may be a candidate biomarker, which remains to be evaluated in our future clinical studies. Once validated, the biomarker can be used for monitoring the outcome of a comprehensive therapy program in conjunction with pharmacological interventions. Furthermore, the frequency of falls ca