Lewy body

We're back at Dementia station, today you are going to learn about Lewy body dementia.

Lewy bodies dementia is named after microscopic changes in the brain, which differentiate from all other types of dementia. In the UK, it is thought that 10,000 suffer from dementia with Lewy bodies at the moment of time there is 700,000 people with this type of dementia and the number is only going in increase unless a cure is found.

Dementia with lewy bodies is a type of dementia that shares symptoms with Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Dementia with lewy bodies can be mistaken as other conditions.

Causes

Lewy bodies dementia is causes by an abnormal amount of protein called lewy bodies inside brain cells. These are also found in people with Parkinson's disease so they are similar to each other. They disrupt the brains normal function and interfere with the chemical signals that are passed from one brain cell to another. Lewy body dementia usually occurs in people that have no history of the condition, even though there have been rare cases that lewy body been inherited from family.

Lewy bodies are tiny bits of protein in the nerve cells. They are linked to low levels of chemical messages and a loss of connections between the nerve cells. Overtime, the nerve cells die and there is a loss of brain tissue.

Signs and symptoms

Like other types of dementia, the condition cause symptoms of thinking speed, language, understanding, judgement and memory. However, significant memory loss may not occur until later on. A person with lewy body dementia might display a symptom of extreme swings between alertness and confusion or drownnissness, which can change unexpectedly from hour to hour to day to day. Furthermore, they might have slow movements, get stiff limbs this will cause a person shuffle when they are walking. A person with lewy body dementia might experience hallucinations where they hear or see things are not actually real and can range from being pleasant to distressing.

Lewy bodies can also be found in the brains of people Parkinson’s disease, and so people with this type of dementia often have a number of symptoms that affect their movement.

Someone with lewy body dementia may experience fluctuating consciousness. This is where a person experience large swings in levels of confusion. Some days the confusion is extreme and are unable to function whereas other people could follow the plot of a film or play a game of cards pretty decently these fluctuations can also happen minute by minute or hour by hour.

Around two thirds of people with lewy body dementia experience visual hallucinations (seeing things that aren’t there but are visual that they seem real). People who experience hallucinations commonly see animals these can  be quite pleasant for some people, but frightening hallucinations can be pleasantly distressing.

Spontaneous parkinsonism produces the usual symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, such as muscle stiffness, slow movement, tremor, shakiness and less of facial expressions.

Someone with lewy body dementia may experience visuospatial difficulties. The start of the dementia can be heralded by increasing clumsiness. As people are robbed of their ability to judge widths and distances falls and breakages are common, as are bumps (or worse)when parking or driving a car.

The thought processing (cognitive symptoms) of dementia are all those of loss. People with lewy body dementia with, to one degree or another, lose their memory, their judgement and quite literally their way.

Another symptom that a person with lewy body dementia may experience sleep disorders, a person might be able to sleep easily during the day, but are restless and disturbed at night because of rapid eye movement where the person tries to act nightmares. This can be very distressing or can be physically harmful for partners.

Physical aggression can be direct result of changes in the brain caused by dementia, or side effacers from medication that is prescribed to treat the dementia. Paranoid delusion and hallucinations can also prompt protectively aggressive reactions. Equally, though aggression can be caused by things that would annoy anyone but that generate a more extreme reaction as a result of the disinhibitions that can occur due to changes in the brain. These other triggers include; noisy surroundings, pain, hunger, thirst, and the person simply not getting on with someone.

Effects

 

People with lewy body dementia are at a higher risk of falls. Especially in the later stages a person may experience a worsening, movement problem which means that when a person walks they get slower and less steady. This means falls become more common.

Eventually someone with lewy body dementia is likely to need intensive nursing care. This can make the person feel they are loosening their home and unable to look after themselves.

During the later stage of dementia a person with lewy body dementia may experience problems with day-to-day memory which is very similar to those people with Alzheimer’s in the middle or later stage. This would affect the individual ability to remember the common words for things which can lead to frustration and confusion, even anger. Furthermore, this can make a conversation an extreme trail.

A person with dementia may lose they identity because no on would include them in the conversation. No one would adapt the way they say things which can make someone with lewy body dementia feel excluded or isolated.

If a person can’t comprehend what has been said, this person might need more time more to process the information unfortunately their relatives don’t allow their loved ones enough time to process the information. In fact they rush there loved  which can make this individual become frustrated, People can also become frustrated if they can’t find the answer to a question which means they could respond back with irritation or even aggression.

 

Frontotemporal dementia

First train station is dementia. Here you would you have a guided tour about dementia. Today you would be learning about a dementia called frontotemporal dementia.

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is relatively rare among forms of dementia, it is sometimes called pick disease or frontal lobe dementia. Furthermore it affects around 16,000 people in the UK.

Frontontemporal dementia occurs much less than other forms of dementia such as Alzhimer's disease or Vascualr dementia. However it is significant cause of dementia in younger people who are under the age of 65 which makes Frontontemporal dementia  the third most common cause for people. In this age brackets it affects men and women equally. Frontontemporal dementia  is most often diagnosed between aged 45-65 though it can affect younger or older people in this considerably younger than the age at which people are most often diagnosed with dementia such as Alzheimer's disease.

The word Frontontemporal dementia  refers to the frontal and temporal lobes that are the regions of the brain that are impaired this form of dementia. The frontal lobe function is thinking, planning, organizing, problem solving, inhibitions, personality and emotions. The temporal lobe function is the memory and processing the language.

There are four types of Frontontemporal dementia. Firsly, behavioural variant Frontontemporal dementia  influnces somone behaviour and cause an individual to not socialize with another appropriately. Secondly, primary progressive aphasia which refers to impairment in language ability this would influence someone ability to communicate and process it. Thirdly, progressive suprancuclear palsy this affects someone balance, cognitive and movement. Someone with this type of frontotemporal dementia will notice they would have a impaired eye moment. Finally, the corticobasal degeneration appears as muscle weakness and tremors and usually affects only one side of the body. As the disorder progress, a person may experience memory and behavior symptoms.

Causes

There are many causes of Frontotemporal dementia, but they can all involve a build-up of abnormal tau proteins in the brain. The abnormal proteins clump together and because toxic to brain cells, which eventually kills them and that causes the affected areas of the brain to shrink over time. We do not fully know why these abnormal proteins build up, but research has found a genetic component, up to 40% of people with Frontotemporal dementia inherited if from their family. Also lifestyle factors can also cause Frontotemporal dementia.

The mutated gene that can affect Frontotemporal dementia are MAPT, GRN or C90RF72 which all play a part in how proteins work n the body. Children of those who carry the gene are at 50% risk of inheriting it.

Signs and symptoms

Symptoms of frontotemporal dementia usually develop gradually and increasing worse over a number of years. Many people will either have behavioural or language problems. As the condition progress, most people experience problems in both of these areas as well as additional physical problems and thinking difficulties. Eventually, the condition spreads to affect most brain functions.

First several years a person with frontotemporal dementia may experience dementia mild.

At this stage, main symptom is mostly behavioural changes such as disinhibition can make someone to make inappropriate comment or at it socially unacceptable ways. Someone might lose the empathy and sympathy they may not show any understanding or be able to show forgiveness to someone. Later on they may developed 'obsessional' behaviours that can include repeating the same words over and over again and hoarding items. Also a person might experience difficulty planning and organizing and sometimes memory. They know a something is wrong but can't put a finger on it, over the contray they can still be capable of managing household tasks and self-care with minimal help.

A person may show reduced inititative and lack of personal hygiene, becomes easily distracted or repeat the same action repeatedly; this is where overeacting or compulsively putting objects in the mouth may occur.

A person with frontotemporal dementia may experience the ability to communicate in expressive speech so they cannot express themselves and receptive speech which is the ability to understand speech. As I said before someone may have trouble finding the right word, speak very slowly, when they read or write they find it incredialy difficuly and not be able to form sentences in a way that make sense to them and other people.

Someone with frontotemporal dementia might display motor actions or the ability to control movement. They may have unwanted arm and leg movments or shakiness consequently they may fall frequently. Intresting fact, a person's memory and understanding of the space around them often remain intact especially in the earlier stages.

Effects

A person with impairment in judgement can lead to financial indiscretion which can lead to catastrophic consequences such as

Someone with frontotemporal dementia  might withdraw themselves away from their friends and relatives. Sometimes an individual might behave inappropriately with strangers, lose their social manners, act spontaneously Sometimes people with frontotemporal dementia  break laws because they loosed their inhibitions. At this stage, the behaviours can often be managed with lifestyle and environmental changes. A MRI image at this point will show mild atrophy in particular areas of frontal lobe.

If someone worked a shop it would affect them because since they not able to give sympathy and empathy towards a customer or even understand their perspectives of the problem. This may lead to the shops loose their customers or an individual is unable to do her/his job which means they would find themselves in a financial problem or rely their family to take in. This would also mean the family would get a closer to their relatives.

A person with frontotemporal dementia  might have a psychological effect like lack of motivation because a person may become very passive such as siting in front of the television or appear to lose interest in hobbies such as reading and when you say to a person with frontotemporal dementia "let's read a chapter of Wuthering Heights." They may give a big sigh because for them to read it takes a lot of effort for them and they got no motivation to read.

A person might not be their usual self in ways that are difficult to identify or even to explain. A person may becomes depressed or anxious in situations where memory problems are causing difficulties.

Websites I used

Heerema, E. (2016) Frontotemporal dementia symptoms, types, treatments. Available at: http://alzheimers.about.com/od/typesofdementia/a/What-Is-Frontotemporal-Dementia.htm (Accessed: 7 April 2016).

Symptoms1 (2013) Available at: http://www.dementia.com/symptoms.html (Accessed: 7 April 2016).

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