Challenges in Early Diagnosis of Frontotemporal Dementia in Clinical Settings: Chris Berka

WATCH TIME: 4 minutes

"Tau is considered to be more prevalent or more involved in frontotemporal dementia and hopefully we're going to have some treatments to help, alleviate some of the issues associated with tau."

Some previous studies suggest that patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) have greater impairment in instrumental activities of daily living in contrast to patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) dementia. However, additional prior research has showed no significant variations among patients with AD dementia and FTD in activities of self-care, household, employment and recreation, shopping and money, and travel, except for in communication.¹ Therefore, there is a need to explore these different variations to assist in differentiating the individual syndromes during assessment.

In a prior study published in the Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology, patients with FTD showed faster rates of decline for “using the stove” and “travel” compared with patients who had AD dementia. Based on these data, care management should consider these variations at the point of diagnosis and address activities observed to be more or earlier impaired in certain syndromes compared with others. In addition to exploring how these variations in everyday functioning may help distinguish these disorders, further research may focus on how electroencephalogram (EEG) may play a role in this process at an earlier stage.

At the recently concluded 2024 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, held July 28 to August 1, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, senior author Chris Berka presented a pilot study highlighting the use of distinctive EEG biosignatures associated with FTD.² During the conference, Berka, CEO and cofounder at Advanced Brain Monitoring, sat down with NeurologyLive^® in an interview to discuss the key challenges in distinguishing FTD from AD in its early stages. She also talked about how tau-targeted treatments might improve the management of FTD, and the role caregivers play in the diagnosis of the behavioral variant of FTD.

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REFERENCES
1. Giebel CM, Knopman D, Mioshi E, Khondoker M. Distinguishing Frontotemporal Dementia From Alzheimer Disease Through Everyday Function Profiles: Trajectories of Change. J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol. 2021;34(1):66-75. doi:10.1177/0891988720901791
2. Meghdadi AH, Berka C, Malek-Ahmadi MH. Inter- and intra-subject variability of quantitative EEG biosignatures and their effect on interpretation of normalized effect size. Presented at: 2024 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference; July 18 to August 1; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Abstract 331.