Personality test could help doctors detect dementia with Lewy bodies

News-Medical.com
Medical Studies/Trials
Published: Thursday, 31-May-2007
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=25749

A simple personality test could help doctors detect dementia with Lewy bodies, a form of dementia often confused with Alzheimer's disease, sooner, according to a study published in the May 29, 2007, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Dementia with Lewy bodies is the second most common neurodegenerative cause of dementia. It shares characteristics with both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Getting the correct diagnosis is especially important because some medications used to treat the mental health symptoms of Alzheimer's disease can be potentially dangerous for people with dementia with Lewy bodies.

The study found that even before diagnosis, people with dementia with Lewy bodies displayed passive personality changes, such as diminished emotional response, disinterest in hobbies, repetitive behaviors, and growing apathy, or lack of interest, more often than those with Alzheimer's.

The study involved 290 people who were part of a larger study and were tested every year for an average of about five years; by the end of the study 128 of the participants had confirmed cases of dementia with Lewy bodies, 128 had Alzheimer's and 34 had no form of dementia. Researchers followed the participants through death, including autopsy results. During annual interviews, participants or their family members were asked about changes in personality, interests and drives.

People with dementia with Lewy bodies were two times more likely to have passive personality traits at the time of the first evaluation than people with Alzheimer's disease. By the time of death, up to 75 percent of those with dementia with Lewy bodies had passive personality changes compared to 45 percent of those with Alzheimer's disease.

"Currently we mainly look for memory problems and other cognitive problems to detect dementia, but personality changes can often occur several years before the cognitive problems," said study author James E. Galvin, MD, MPH, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO, and member of the American Academy of Neurology. "Identifying the earliest features of dementia may enable doctors to begin therapy as soon as possible. This will become increasingly important as newer, potentially disease-modifying medications are developed. It also gives the patient and family members more time to plan for the progressive decline."

Galvin said more detailed personality tests are not often used in most office settings because of time and lack of training. "Our results show incorporating a brief, simple inventory of personality traits may help improve the detection of dementia with Lewy bodies," said Galvin.

This one is not nice. Memory, long and short, is fine, but more passive, more disinterested - hmmm, maybe.
Languor = Lewy ???????
Ouch (maybe). Not a nice thought.

I have formed the impression that PWP don't swing too far in either emotional direction. I know it is true for myself and many others on here. Dependable. Solid. We are society's Designated Drivers.

Now that the AA contingent has had their little guffaw...

The usual take is that we lack the capacity for strong emotion. But I think that it is just the opposite - we feel too much and are forced to repress the emotion from an early age.

Strong emotion means cortisol goes up and we are hypersensitive to cortisol. We dislike confrontation for example. We know what stress does to us. We are not thrill seekers. I suggest that we dampen our emotions to avoid cortisol. And I suspect that the sensitivity increases with age.

A similar hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli has been offered to explain autism. They retreat from overload.

In my own case, Mr. Cool is the name. With one exception - my wife. Just the opposite of me, the world tears her up so much that I hide the newspapers. Long before PD came along, we both realized that the only thing that got through my armor was her pain. Couldn't and can't handle it. Fries the circuits. Very much a stress response.

I once read a phrase about alcoholism that stuck with me - "The pain of being sentient." That was many years before PD, but the phrase stuck. I never gave in to the bottle - mainly because my dad provided a great example of its dangers. But anything else that didn't involve a needle was on the table for consideration.

There may be a gender difference here, but many of us have a record of abusing about anything we could catch. Does any of this resonate?