Two Recent Articles About Dementia

Two articles in the news are worth mentioning, in case you missed them. First, the New York Times ran an article, Why Didn't She Get Alzheimer's? The Answer Could Hold a Key to Fighting the Disease. "Researchers have found a woman with a rare genetic mutation that has protected her from dementia even though her brain has developed major neurological features of the disease."  The article highlights a recently published study "in the journal Nature Medicine, [in which] researchers say the woman, whose name they withheld to protect her privacy, has another mutation that has protected her from dementia even though her brain has developed a major neurological feature of Alzheimer’s disease."  The article reminds us to not expect instant therapies-this is going to take time, but even so, it's still very positive news. "[T]his case comes at a time when the Alzheimer’s field is craving new approaches after billions of dollars have been spent on developing and testing treatments and some 200 drug trials have failed. It has been more than 15 years since the last treatment for dementia was approved, and the few drugs available do not work very well for very long."

Thanks to Professor Naomi Cahn for alerting me to this article.

The second article I wanted to mention also appeared recently in the New York Times. The Loneliness of Frontotemporal Dementiaoffers this description of the disease:

Frontotemporal dementia attacks people in their fifth or sixth decade, just as retirement comes within reach. Doctors believe the disease affects 60,000 people in the United States alone. Neurons in the front and side of the brain wilt, and along with them, images of peacefully growing old fade. Judgment and complex planning yields to chaotic disorganization. Inhibitions give way to impulsivity and hypersexuality, so that longtime faithful partners look to affairs and excessive pornography. Empathy turns to apathy. Obsessions and compulsions erupt. Language can become laborious; the meaning of words and objects can be lost, and fluent speech can dissolve into fragments of sentences with nonsensical grammar. Jarringly, memory remains largely untouched. Since brain areas that dictate personality are often the first to suffer, most people end up on a therapist’s couch long before finding their way to a neurologist.

The article examines the importance of support groups and how some individuals present with the disease.  There are some trials underway; "'[b]ecause frontotemporal dementia is often familial, we can get people into a trial before they have symptoms,' [according to one expert] 'By sequencing genes from a blood sample, we know which family members are probably going to get the disease. If we can slow down progression in those people, it’s virtually a cure.'”