Contributions of other brain pathologies in dementia with lewy bodies.
Author
Summary, in English
The clinical picture with its pathological correlate was analysed in 16 patients fulfilling consensus criteria for dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). The cases were part of a larger cohort (n = 200) of patients within a prospective longitudinal study of dementing disorders. Six cases exhibited not only Lewy bodies (LBs) but also other brain pathologies such as Alzheimer changes, multiple infarcts or complete and incomplete white matter infarcts. Degeneration of the nucleus basalis of Meynert and substantia nigra was also seen. The 10 cases without LBs all had Alzheimer changes. In 7 cases, these changes were combined with mainly incomplete frontal white matter infarcts. However, the degeneration of brain stem nuclei was less pronounced in these cases. Symptoms such as fluctuations in cognition, falls and episodic confusion appeared in association with arterial hypotension, which developed during the course of dementia in almost all the 16 cases. The majority of the cases were treated with neuroleptics and other potentially hypotensive medication. This study shows that multiple and different pathological features may contribute to a clinical symptom constellation as in DLB. The case study approach reveals the complexity of the clinico-pathological relationships in dementia that might otherwise be lost in the analysis of larger group data. Copyright 2002 S. Karger AG, Basel
Publishing year
2002
Language
English
Pages
130-148
Publication/Series
Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders
Volume
13
Issue
3
Links
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Karger
Topic
- Neurology
Keywords
- Hallucinations/pathology/radionuclide imaging
- Male
- Middle Age
- Lewy Body Disease/drug therapy/*pathology/*radionuclide imaging
- Aged
- Human
- Antipsychotic Agents/therapeutic use
- Alzheimer Disease/drug therapy/pathology/radionuclide imaging
- Basal Ganglia Diseases/pathology/radionuclide imaging
- Female
- Cerebrovascular Circulation
- Cerebral Infarction/drug therapy/pathology/radionuclide imaging
- Cardiovascular Diseases/pathology/radionuclide imaging
- Blood
Status
Published
Research group
- Clinical Memory Research
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1420-8008