Because the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) shows major clinical overlap with primary psychiatric disorders (PPD) that affect similar neuroanatomical circuits, a common genetic vulnerability between FTD and PPD was hypothesized. We studied whether PPD are more prevalent in families of patients with sporadic frontotemporal dementia compared with healthy controls (HC), subjects with Alzheimer's disease (AD), and individuals with bipolar disorder (BD). In this case-control study performed between January 2013 and February 2019, we investigated the first-degree family history concerning depression, psychosis (including schizophrenia), BD, and autism spectrum disorder for 73 bvFTD patients, 153 patients with BD, 108 patients with AD, and 101 HC with a semistructured questionnaire (QFTD-NL 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry
January 2022
Objectives: The chromosome 9 open reading frame 72 gene (C9orf72) hexanucleotide repeat expansion (C9orf72) is the most common genetic cause of behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Since the onset of the C9orf72-associated disease is sometimes hard to define, we hypothesise that C9orf72 may cause a lifelong neuropsychiatric vulnerability. The first aim of our study was to explore lifelong behavioural and personality characteristics in C9orf72.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Right temporal variant frontotemporal dementia (rtvFTD) has been generally considered as a right sided variant of semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), which is a genetically sporadic disorder. Recently, we have shown that rtvFTD has a unique clinical syndrome compared to svPPA and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia.
Objective: We challenge the assumption that rtvFTD is a sporadic, non-familial variant of FTD by identifying potential autosomal dominant inheritance and related genes in rtvFTD.
Follow-up studies on predictive testing for hereditary neurodegenerative diseases mainly focussed on psychological outcomes. We investigated whether the social and personal life of mutation carriers differ negatively from non-carriers and untested at-risk individuals. Asymptomatic individuals (≥ 35 years) who received a genetic test result for Huntington's disease, frontotemporal dementia or Alzheimer's disease more than 2 years before the onset of the study and untested subjects at 50% risk were invited to complete a questionnaire and an additional questionnaire with extra or adjusted items.
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