engleski

Clinical and Psychometric Differences between Frontotemporal Dementia and Alzheimer's disease

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a major cause of non-Alzheimer&#8217; s dementia (AD) in individuals younger than 65 years of age, and may be clinically mistaken for AD, especially in early stages of disease. A proportion of patients who meet the NINCDS-ADRDA criteria for AD have FTD confirmed at autopsy. A retrospective review of 48 neuropathologically confirmed cases of FTD (27 had completed psychometric testing) yielded clinical and psychological features for comparison with 27 age-, sex-, education-, and severity-matched individuals with AD. At first visit FTD was distinguished from AD by behavioral abnormalities, particularly impulsivity (p< 0.0001) and disinhibition (p =0. 0004), less social withdrawal (p=0 .01), and progressive nonfluent aphasia. The two clinical phenotypes reported comparable executive dysfunction and memory problems. The FTD individuals performed better than AD individuals on a visual test of episodic memory (p< 0.05) but worse on word fluency, sensitive to frontal lobe dysfunction (p< 0.05) (performance correlated with aphasic features). Histopathological AD was present in 11 of the 48 FTD individuals. Clinical and cognitive features of FTD may overlap with AD, particularly for memory and executive function, although behavioral and language difficulties distinguish those with FTD. Part of the complaints about memory in FTD may reflect word-finding difficulties stemming from language dysfunction.

Frontotemporal dementia; Alzheimer's dementia; Differences

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