3. Results
The clinical and demographic characteristics of the sample at
different time points (T0–T4) are shown in Table 1. The DDD of
antidepressants varied between 0.8 (SD¼0.5) and 1.0 (SD¼0.5). Of
the 1158 patients, 98 (8.5%) completed T4 (completers). The
completers were younger, had less severe dementia, better physical
health and performed better in activities of daily living at T0
than the non-completers. At T0, 80.5% of the total sample had
dementia, defined by a score Z1 on the CDR scale, 33.7% had
severe dementia (CDR score¼3). The severity of dementia
increased during follow-up, as the CDR-sum of boxes score
increased non-linearly in time (both first- and second-order time
components were significant [po0.001]).