Dementia with Lewy Bodies versus Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease Dementia: A Comparison of Cognitive Profiles

Abstract

Background and PurposeIt is particularly difficult to differentiate dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) from the related dementias of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease dementia (PDD). Few studies have been designed to comparatively analyze detailed neuropsychological assessments of DLB patients and patients with AD and PDD.MethodsThree groups of patients participated in this study: 10 with DLB, 76 with AD, and 17 with PDD, who had been diagnosed as probable DLB, AD, and PDD, respectively, according to the clinical criteria of the consortium on DLB, National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Diseases and Stroke/Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorder Association, and the clinical diagnostic criteria for PDD. All patients were evaluated by careful neurological examination with detailed neuropsychological testing.ResultsSignificant differences among the three groups were found for attention, memory, and executive function, which included tasks of backward digit span, three-word recall, verbal delayed recall, and the Stroop test. Post hoc analysis revealed that the deficiencies of attention on the digit span task were greater in the DLB group than in the AD and PDD groups. The scores for episodic verbal memory tasks were significantly lower in the DLB and AD groups than in the PDD group. The performance in frontal executive function, as indicated by the Stroop test, was significantly worse in the DLB and PDD groups than in the AD group.ConclusionsThe results of the present study show that the pattern of cognitive dysfunction, in terms of attention, episodic memory, and executive functions, differ between patients with DLB and patients with AD and PDD.

Syntax, action verbs, action semantics, and object semantics in Parkinson's disease: Dissociability, progression, and executive influences

“…Nevertheless, cognitive alterations in PD are now known to differ from those typical of neurodegenerative diseases of cortical predominance (Bronnick, Emre, Lane, Tekin, & Aarsland, 2007;Noe et al, 2004;Park et al, 2011). The current model for assessing PD also taps EFs, as these may be disrupted following fronto-striatal damage.…”

Predictors of Mild Cognitive Impairment in Early-Stage Parkinson's Disease

“…Although neuropsychological deficits in PD have been clearly documented, the characteristic profiles based on disease duration and the underlying neuropathology implicated remain controversial [5,7,8]. This is especially the case when reviewing the literature on dopamine replacement therapy in cognition.…”

Comparisons of clinical symptoms in biomarker‐confirmed Alzheimer's disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, and frontotemporal dementia patients in a local memory clinic

“…To our knowledge, this was the first Chinese study that employed these biomarkers to achieve high accuracy of clinical diagnoses of AD, DLB, and FTD and then compared their clinical features. All previous Caucasian and Asian studies that reported or compared clinical features obtained dementia diagnoses without any biomarker support …”

“…A case series of 35 Chinese DLB patients noted memory impairment was found in 58.8% of the patients . A Korean study comparing clinically diagnosed DLB ( n = 10) and AD ( n = 76) patients found that these two groups of patient had a similar degree of impairment in three‐word recall and 20‐min delayed recall . The memory impairment in DLB patients was proposed to be the result of medial temporal lobe (hippocampus and amygdala) degeneration and encoding impairment .…”

“…Previous studies have compared these symptoms among patients with different dementia subtypes. However, the diagnoses of different dementia subtypes were mainly based on clinical diagnostic criteria rather than neuroimaging or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers . There is concern about the accuracy of the clinical diagnoses in these studies.…”