The authors wish to make readers aware that two of the symptoms on the HAM-D – loss of weight and loss of insight – were reverse coded in the early assessments. The analyses have been corrected and there are minor changes to the paper. The mean (SD) for loss of weight was 0.59 (0.84), while the mean (SD) for loss of insight was 0.24 (0.51). A three-cluster model still best fit the data and the profiles were similar to those presented earlier, but the distribution of patients changed. A total of 39% had the lowest mean scores, and 15% had the highest mean scores across symptoms. Clusters were differentiated by sex, education, stress, and ADL and IADL limitations. The variable reduction techniques resulted in some slight changes to the symptom groupings but the representative symptoms and resulting latent class analysis were unchanged. Specific details of the changes are available from the corresponding author upon request.

We read with great interest the comments from Motosko and colleagues (2012) regarding our paper, in which we reported that insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) was not associated with delirium in our prospective study of critically ill patients (Morandi et al., 2011). Based on these results and those of the other four published studies examining IGF-1 and delirium, we take issue with the statement that a large body of evidence supports IGF-1's role in delirium pathogenesis. As pointed out by Adamis and Meagher (2011) in their recent systematic review, these five studies were small and produced conflicting results, with only three of the five finding an association between IGF-1 and delirium. Important differences in the patients studied may explain, in part, the conflicting results. Investigations of older medical inpatients who were not critically ill found IGF-1 to be associated with delirium, but neither a study of hip surgery patients (Lemstra et al., 2008) nor our study of intensive care unit (ICU) patients found an association. The relative importance of IGF-1 to delirium might be diminished during critical illness given that a multitude of risk factors are involved in the pathogenesis of delirium in this vulnerable population. On average, medical ICU patients are subject to more than ten delirium risk factors; changes in IGF-1 in this setting might therefore contribute less to delirium than in other settings.

In the Guest Editorial by Frisoni et al. an element in Table 1 (in the right-hand section “Preclinical AD: theoretical stages”) contained a misprint. Stage 1 – neurodegeneration should have been indicated by a minus sign not a plus sign.

We thank you for the opportunity to respond to the letter written by Dr. Lourenço and Dr. Paradela, our colleagues from Rio de Janeiro. We understand scientific progress relies on lively debate and exchange of experiences; therefore, we also thank our colleagues for the opportunity to reflect upon our previous findings.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in older adults have been neglected for a long time. As far as we know only five papers have been published. No empirical research in this area was found. Four papers were case studies of men diagnosed with an ASD (James et al., 2006; Naidu et al., 2006; van Alphen and Heijnen-Kohl, 2009; van Niekerk et al., 2011), and the fifth one was an opinion paper concerning the diagnosis of ASD in the elderly and the difficulties arising in this (Heijnen-Kohl and van Alphen, 2009).

Owing to a miscommunication at proof stage, the words “with dementia” were omitted from this article in paragraph 4 line 7 on p S62 where they should have been placed between the words “people” and “in”. The correct wording of the clause is “. . . the number with dementia in the second most populous state (Victoria) will exceed the total number of people with dementia in Australia today”.

Use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is common in chronic diseases. To investigate its relevance in Alzheimer's disease (AD), we interviewed 38 patients and an attempt was made to determine the type of CAM used and reasons for using it.

The healthcare provision for the elderly with a history of offending is under-researched and suffers from a lack of adequate services. Although the number of offences committed by older patients is low, research suggests they are more likely to re-offend, and have significant legal and psychiatric histories (Tomar et al., 2005). Older offenders also have complex medical problems such as neurological disease, including dementia, heart disease, stroke, and hypertension (Lewis et al., 2006).