Dementia with Lewy bodies
Dementia with Lewy bodies is a type of dementia accompanied by changes in sleep, behavior, cognition, movement, and autonomic bodily functions. REM sleep behavior disorder —in which people lose the muscle paralysis that normally occurs during REM sleep and act out their dreams — is a core feature. Other core features are visual hallucinations, marked fluctuations in attention or alertness, and parkinsonism. DLB typically begins after the age of fifty and people with the disease have a life expectancy of about eight years after diagnosis.
About Dementia with Lewy bodies in brief
Dementia with Lewy bodies is a type of dementia accompanied by changes in sleep, behavior, cognition, movement, and autonomic bodily functions. REM sleep behavior disorder —in which people lose the muscle paralysis that normally occurs during REM sleep and act out their dreams — is a core feature. Other core features are visual hallucinations, marked fluctuations in attention or alertness, and parkinsonism. The exact cause is unknown, but involves widespread deposits of abnormal clumps of protein that form in neurons of the diseased brain. DLB typically begins after the age of fifty and people with the disease have a life expectancy of about eight years after diagnosis. There is no cure or medication to stop the disease from progressing, and people in the latter stages of DLB may be unable to care for themselves. Treatments aim to relieve some of the symptoms and reduce the burden on caregivers. Medicines such as donepezil and rivastigmine are effective at improving cognition and overall functioning, and melatonin can be used for sleep-related symptoms. Antipsychotics are usually avoided, even for hallucinations, because severe and life-threatening reactions occur in almost half of people with DLB. The atypical parkinsonian syndromes include DLB, along with other conditions. The symptoms can be divided into essential, core, and supportive features. A diagnosis is made after cognitive decline progresses to a point of interfering with normal daily activities, or social or occupational function. While an essential feature of dementia is essential, it does not always appear early on, and is more likely to present as the condition progresses.
While specific symptoms may vary, the core features ofDLB are fluctuating cognition, rapid eye movement, sleep behavior, andParkinsonism starting with or after the dementia diagnosis. In DLB there is an identifiable set of early signs and symptoms; these are called the prodromal, or pre-dementia, phase of the disease. These early signs can appear 15 years or more before dementia develops. The earliest signs are constipation and dizziness from autonomic dysfunction, hyposmia, visual hallucinations and RBD. Memory loss is not always an early symptom, but it is the essential feature and must be present for an early diagnosis, while RBD may appear years or decades before other symptoms. DLB is a synucleinopathy, meaning that it is characterized by abnormal deposits of alpha-synuclein protein in the brain. The synucle inopathies include Parkinson’s disease, multiple system atrophy, and other rarer conditions. It is a common form of dementia, but the prevalence is not known accurately and many diagnoses are missed. The disease was first described by Kenji Kosaka in 1976. It is one of the two Lewy body dementias, and it is sometimes classified in other ways, such as Lewy neurites and Lewy disease dementia. The condition affects both the central nervous system and the autonomic nervous system. It also affects behavior; mood changes such as depression and apathy are common.
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This page is based on the article Dementia with Lewy bodies published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
