Abstract
Background/Objectives Frontal variant Alzheimer’s Disease (fvAD) is relatively recently characterised condition which has been traditionally regarded as a young onset dementia. Classically the diagnosis relied primarily on clinical criteria. However, with the advent of new biomarkers and imaging technology, we expect to see a better reflection of the true prevalence of this condition in the community.
Methods We conducted a 10-year retrospective audit of all patients presenting to an outpatient specialist cognitive neurology clinic from 2009 to 2019.
Results 626 patients were seen over this period with 334 receiving a diagnosis of dementia. In the 65 and over age group, Alzheimer’s Dementia (AD) was the predominant diagnosis accounting for 59% of all dementia. Under 65 years, AD and behavioural variant Frontotemporal Dementia (bvFTD) patients represented 40% and 34% of the diagnoses, respectively. A total of ten patients were diagnosed with fvAD, seven of whom were aged over 65 years.
Conclusion Frontal variant AD was an uncommon diagnosis in our study making up 3% of the total dementia diagnosis over 10 years. The majority of those were in the late onset dementia group, meaning that dysexecutive profiles in older people with dementia are still most likely due to AD pathology. We note that the use of imaging techniques including FDG-PET, and new plasma biomarkers, may have assisted in better identifying a relatively recently characterised condition. Our findings would suggest that fvAD is less common in those under 65, with most patients in that group being diagnosed with bvFTD.
