Diagnosing Lewy body disease at earlier stages

As the dementia research community strives to find new ways to detect cognitive diseases at earlier stages, a team of British researchers is studying ways to determine whether mild cognitive impairment might turn into Lewy body disease.

Different forms of neurodegenerative disease have specific ways of appearing at their earliest stages, the Newcastle University researchers note in the study, published in the Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. The mild cognitive impairment (MCI) stage of Alzheimer’s disease is different from the mild cognitive impairment stage of Lewy body disease. Early detection and intervention is crucial, since treatments have greater impact when received at earlier stages.

The team studied participants with Alzheimer’s MCI, Lewy body MCI or Lewy body dementia and a control group. By comparing the symptoms accompanying the mild impairment stage and tracking which disease manifested later, the study produced a list of symptoms commonly associated with the Lewy body form, especially when taken as a group.

The leading characteristics relating specifically to Lewy body MCI:

• Fluctuating concentration
• periods of muscle rigidity
• changes in hand-writing
• gait and posture changes
• drooling
• symptoms of REM sleep disorder

Other symptoms, such as tremors, hyposmia and slow gait were common but not specific to Lewy body MCI or else tended to appear much later in the disease progression.

Pamela Tabar

Pamela Tabar was editor-in-chief of I Advance Senior Care from 2013-2018. She has worked as a writer and editor for healthcare business media since 1998, including as News Editor of Healthcare Informatics. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Kent State University and a master’s degree in English from the University of York, England.