Dementia Flashcards
What are 4 types of dementia and how common are they?
- Alzheimer’s – most common
- Frontotemporal
- Vascular (25%)
- Lew body (15-25%)
What are RF for AD?
- Advanced age
- FHx
- Genetics
- Down’s syndrome
- Cerebrovascular disease
- Lifestyle factors and medications
What genes are related to AD?
ApoE E4 allele
What is the time course of AD?
deteriorating course 8-10years
What is the patho of AD?
- Excess of interneural amyloid peptide’s due to overproduction or diminished clearance of beta amyloids
- Loss of acetylcholine neurotransmitter
Where is the neuronal loss in AD?
hippocampus, amygdala, temporal neocrortex and subcortical nuceli
What does AD overlap with?
95% of AD show vascular dementia
What are RF for fontrotemporal lobe dementia?
- FHx
- 45-65 usually
- Mutations in MAPT gene, GRN gene and C9orf72 gene
What gene mutations are in FTD?
- MAPT gene
- GRN gene
- C9orf72 gene
What is the patho of FTD?
neuronal loss, gliosis and microvascular changes of frontal lobes, anterior cingulate cortex and insular cortex
How common is vascular dementia?
second most common dementia in old ppl
with large overlap with Alzheimer’s ad people can have mixed
What is patho of vascular dementia?
loss of brain parenchyma from cerebrovascular causes from infarction and small vessel changes
What are the causes of VD?
- Infarction
- Leukoaraiosis
- Haemorrhage
- F>M
What are RF for VD?
- Hx of stroke
- Age >60
- Obesity
- Hypertension
- Cig smoking
What are RF for lewy body dementia?
older age: 60-95
What are the symptoms and signs of AD?
- Memory loss
- Disorientation
- Nominal dysphasia
- Misplacing items/getting lost
- Apathy
- Decline in IADLs
- Personality change
- Unremarkable intial physical examination
What are the symptoms and signs of FTD?
- Coarsening of personality, social behaviour and habits
- Progressive loss of language fluency or comprehension
- Development of memeory impairment, disorientation or apraxias
- Progressive self-neglect and abandonment of work, activities and social contacts
- Overeating
- Emotional blunting
What are other symtoms with FTD?
50% have parkinsonism and some MND
What are symptoms and signs of VD?
- Difficulty solving problems
- Apathy
- Disinhibition
- Slowed processing of info
- Poor attention
- Retrieval memory deficit
- Frontal release reflexes
What are the symptoms and signs of LBD?
- Cognitive fluctuations
- Visual hallucination
- Motor symptoms
- REM sleep behavioural disturbance
- Depression
- Autonomic dysfunction
What are some DDx for AD?
- Mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
- Delirium
- Depression
- Vascular depression
What are some DDx for FTD?
- Alzheimer’s
- Dementia with Lewy bodies
- Vascular dementia
- Bipolar
- Major depression
- OCD
What are some DDx for VD?
- Depression
- AD
- Mild cognitive impairment
- Lewy body dementia
What are DDx for LBD?
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Parkinson’s disease
- Frontotemporal dementia
- Vascular dementia
- Prion disorders
What investigations do you do for AD?
- Bedside cognitive testing
- CT
- MRI
What would bedside cognitive testing e.g. MMSE show in AD?
- impaired recall
- nominal dysphasia
- disorientation
- constructional dyspraxia and impaired executive functioning
What would CT show in AD?
exclude SOL and other path
What would MRI show in AD?
generalised atrophy with medial, temporal lobe and lateral parietal predominance
Why do you do bloods in AD?
rule out a metabolic induced dementia
What bloods are done for AD?
- FBC
- Metabolic panel
- TSH
- Vit B12
- Urine drug screen: rule out recreational use
How do you have diagnostic confirmation FTD?
on pathological examination or identification of gene mutation