Non-Alzheimer's Dementias
Infarcts or ruptures also occur more often in people with high blood pressure and/or diabetes, and in smokers.Vascular dementia can be slowed by controlling blood pressure, regulating blood sugar, and stopping smoking.
Binswanger's Dementia (subcortical arteriosclerotic encephalopathy) is uncommon and is usually associated with severe high blood pressure and vascular disease. It is characterized by severe neurologic symptoms due to acute strokes and there is rapid deterioration of the patient.
In more than 25% of patients who have Parkinson's Disease, some degree of dementia does occur. Some estimates even go as high as 80%. At autopsy, the brains of Parkinson's patients have many of the same types of tissue changes as Alzheimer's patients.
Progressive supranuclear palsy has dementia as a symptom. The dementia appears after other neurologic symptoms occur such as falls, vision problems, swallowing problems and joint pain.
Huntington's disease (chorea) sufferers may show signs of dementia.
Pick's disease dementia is evidenced by apathy, memory disturbance, increased carelessness, poor personal hygiene and a decreased attention span.
Frontal lobe dementia syndromes may occur due to tumors, previous surgery, irradiation to the brain, or severe head trauma. Repeated head trauma results in dementia pugilistica, which occurs in professional fighters.
Normal-pressure hydrocephalus is a progressive occurance of three prominent symptoms: progressive dementia, incontinence (loss of bladder and bowel function), and an unsteady, slow, and wide-based gait (walking). It is more common in men and may be related to prior meningitis, brain hemorrhage, trauma or neurosurgical procedures.
Subdural hematoma is a collection of blood in the space between the skull and the brain. It usually results from trauma and can cause changes in mental status, coma, delirium or a dementia type syndrome. Changes in behavior and thinking can begin any time after blood begins to accumulate and can progress rapidly or slowing according to the size and location of the collection of blood.
Creutzfeld-Jakob disease is the most well known infectious cause of dementia. The infectious agent is a protein called a prion that can be aquired genetically, through transplantation of tissue, by cannabalism, and apparantly by eating products of cattle infected with mad-cow disease. It progresses more rapidly than Alzheimer's and usually lasts from 6 to 12 months until death.
Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease is another dementia which is caused by prions. It affects mainly younger persons and has a longer duration than Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
General paresis is a form of syphilis and
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