Abstract
OBJECTIVE:To evaluate emotional blunting in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia compared to Alzheimer's disease BACKGROUND:Emotional blunting is a major clinical feature of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Assessing the change in emotional blunting with the development of bvFTD may facilitate the differential diagnosis of this disorder and can quantify a major source of distress for patients’ caregivers and families. DESIGN/METHODS:We evaluated investigator ratings on the Scale for Emotional Blunting (SEB) for 13 patients with bvFTD compared to 18 age-matched patients with early-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD). The caregiver also performed SEB ratings for both the patients' premorbid behavior (before dementia-onset) and the patients’ behavior on clinical presentation (after dementia-onset). RESULTS:Before dementia-onset, caregivers for both dementia groups reported normal SEB scores, but after dementia-onset, both caregivers and investigators reported significantly greater SEB scores for the bvFTD patients than for the AD patients. The bvFTD caregivers rated the patients as much more emotionally blunted than did the investigators. A change of 14.5 or greater in caregiver SEB ratings of emotional blunting suggests of bvFTD. The change in caregiver SEB ratings did not covary with caregiver burden and was most strongly correlated with reports of right and left frontal hypometabolism on FDG PET scans. CONCLUSIONS:Changes in caregiver’ assessments of emotional blunting with dementia-onset can distinguish patients with bvFTD from those with AD and better reflect the impact of emotional blunting than similar assessments made by clinicians or investigators. Study Supported by:NIA Grant #R01AG034499-04 and the VA GRECC Advanced Fellowship in Geriatrics Award to J. Barsuglia.
Disclosure: Dr. Joshi has nothing to disclose. Dr. Barsuglia has nothing to disclose. Dr. Mather has nothing to disclose. Dr. Jimenez has nothing to disclose. Dr. Shapira has nothing to disclose.
Tuesday, April 29 2014, 7:30 am-11:00 am
- Copyright © 2014 by AAN Enterprises, Inc.
Letters: Rapid online correspondence
REQUIREMENTS
You must ensure that your Disclosures have been updated within the previous six months. Please go to our Submission Site to add or update your Disclosure information.
Your co-authors must send a completed Publishing Agreement Form to Neurology Staff (not necessary for the lead/corresponding author as the form below will suffice) before you upload your comment.
If you are responding to a comment that was written about an article you originally authored:
You (and co-authors) do not need to fill out forms or check disclosures as author forms are still valid
and apply to letter.
Submission specifications:
- Submissions must be < 200 words with < 5 references. Reference 1 must be the article on which you are commenting.
- Submissions should not have more than 5 authors. (Exception: original author replies can include all original authors of the article)
- Submit only on articles published within 6 months of issue date.
- Do not be redundant. Read any comments already posted on the article prior to submission.
- Submitted comments are subject to editing and editor review prior to posting.
