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Non-Alzheimer's Dementias

© Karen Largent

About 4 to 5 million Americans have some form of cognitive failure. Cognitive function is the processes by which knowledge is acquired, retained and used. The failure to function cognitively is most often due to delirium (acute confusional state) or dementia. This article will give you a very basic and general overview of the various types of dementias and the illnesses that may have dementia as a symptom.

Dementia is defined as: a chronic deterioration of intellectual function and other cognitive (requires thought) skills severe enough to interfere with the ability to perform activities of daily living (ADL'S).

Because there are no laboratory tests, evaluation of dementia is usually done by a history and physical exam. There are several types of Dementia resembling Alzheimer's Disease and also some illnesses that can have dementia as a presenting symptom.

This information may sound rather technical to you as these dementias are very hard to distinguish one from another. Physicians quite often cannot tell exactly what type of dementia a person may be suffering with without exhaustive testing, in depth history and much time.

If you find it to be too confusing, please let me know and I will try to clarify as best I can. They are all so similar in symptoms it is even possible for a person to have more than one type of dementia! Hopefully research and diagnosis will eventually be able to better distinguish between all of these dementias.

Alzheimer's Disease which this topic focuses on, is a progressive loss of cognitive function assciated with an overabundance of senile plaque formation in the brain along with B-amyloid and neuofibrillary tangles consisting of tau protein. It's cause is not yet known. In runs in families in about 15 to 20% of cases. The remaining sporadic cases most likely have some genetic cause.

Of the dementias classified as Non-Alzheimer's: Lewy body dementia may be the second most common after Alzheimer's. Lewy bodies are lesions of degenerating brain neurons which occur in Parkinson's disease and also occur in dementia with or without the features associated with Parkinson's. Symptoms, signs, and the course of Lewy body dementia resemble Alzheimer's. The most prevalent difference in symptoms is the occurance of hallucinations (mostly visual) in Lewy body dementia

Vascular Dementia is usually due to infarction, or in other words a rupture of a blood vessel in the brain. These multiple ruptures of small and medium sized blood vessels are due to the vessels being diseased. It is more common in men and generally starts to occur after the age of 70.

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