New publication – Hornberger et al.
Title: How preserved is episodic memory in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia?
Authors: Hornberger, M., Piguet, O., Graham, A., Nestor, P.J., Hodges, J.
Journal: Neurology
Abstract:
Objectives: Studies have shown variable memory performance in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) patients. Our study investigated whether this variability is due to the admixture of patients with true bvFTD and phenocopy patients. We also sought to compare bvFTD and Alzheimer disease (AD) patients’ performance.
Methods: We analyzed neuropsychological memory performance in patients with a clinical diagnosis of bvFTD divided into those who progressed (N = 50) and those who remained stable (N = 39), AD patients (N = 64) and healthy controls (N = 64).
Results:Progressive bvFTD patients were impaired on most memory tests to a similar level to that of early AD patients. Findings from a subset of progressive bvFTD patients with confirmed FTLD pathology (N = 10) corroborated these findings. By contrast, phenocopy bvFTD patients performed significantly better than progressors and AD. Logistic regression revealed that bvFTD patients can distinguished to a high degree (85%) on the immediate recall score of a word list learning test (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test).
Conclusions: Our results provide evidence for an underlying memory deficit in “real” or progressive bvFTD similar to AD, though the groups differ in orientation scores with bvFTD patients being intact. Exclusion solely based on impaired neuropsychological memory performance can potentially lead to an underdiagnosis of FTD.
