Dementia with lewy bodies dlb is the second most common type of degenerative dementia accounting for approximately 42 of all diagnosed dementia in the community and up to 75 of those in secondary care lewy body protein was first discovered by a german scientist friederich h. Kenji kosaka in 1976. Dementia of lewy body dlb type is the second commonest degenerative cause of dementia. Cognitive impairment is common among pd patients and the prevalence of dementia in pd is approximately 30 to 40 increasing to 80 after 20 years goetz et al 2008. Dementia with lewy bodies dlb is a complex multisymptom disorder. 1 2 the name dlb is derived from the pathology of the disorder in which there is widespread appearance of lewy bodies in the cerebral cortex and in the basal ganglia.
When making decisions regarding the treatment of dlb the patients quality of life qol should always be the main consideration. Lewy in the early 1900s while doing research on parkinsons disease. Lewy bodies are spherical intracytoplasmic inclusion bodies composed of abnormally phosphorylated neurofilament proteins aggregated with ubiquitin and α synuclein4 found in cortical and subcortical regions in dlb42 lewy body formation and neuronal loss in the brainstem nuclei particularly the substantia nigra leads to the movement disorder seen in dlb4 α synuclein has not been linked. Hely et al 2008. We searched the pubmed database using the keywords x201cquality of lifex201d. Table 3 thus reflecting the described impairment in axonal transport and axonal loss reviewed in underlying the development of both ad and lb pathologies.
Apathy in lewy body disorders is a common cause of disability and caregiver burden. Here we examine the literature for the evidence behind imaging modalities that could assist in making the diagnosis. Lewy body diseases lbds are the result of abnormal accumulation of the synaptic protein alpha synuclein and include pd parkinsons disease dementia pdd and dlb. Indeed elevated levels of csf total tau considered a marker of axonal neuronal damage have been confirmed in cases with a definite diagnosis of ad lewy body variant of ad as well as dlb alone see. The concept of dementia with lewy bodies dlb was first proposed in a case report by a japanese psychiatrist dr. 1 2 lewy bodies are the pathological hallmark of parkinsons disease but in this disease lewy bodies appear almost exclusively in the.
To our knowledge this is the first review article focusing on the qol in dlb patients. In the 19 pd studies there were five different scales used to measure apathy with the exception of an rct published in 1961 which used a clinical interview to assess apathy. Dementia with lewy bodies dlb is a common neurodegenerative dementia in older people. However the clinical features particularly cognitive fluctuations and rapid eye movement sleep disorder are often hard to elicit leading to difficulty in making the diagnosis clinically. Collectively lewy body dementias represent the second most common neurodegenerative cause of dementia in the elderly walker et al 2015 with fluctuating cognition a core clinical feature in the diagnostic criteria for dlb since first being introduced in 1992 mckeith et al 1992 2017. 1 two years later based on their neuropathological findings from three autopsied cases kosaka 2 reported the characteristic distribution of lewy bodies in cerebral cortices in the subjects with the later so called diffuse lewy body disease dlbd.
Measurement of apathy.