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Differentiation of neuropsychological features between posterior cortical atrophy and early onset Alzheimer’s disease

BACKGROUND: Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a group of clinical syndromes characterized by visuospatial and visuoperceptual impairment, with memory relatively preserved. Although PCA is pathologically almost identical to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), they have different cognitive features. Those dif...

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Autores principales: Li, Jieying, Wu, Liyong, Tang, Yi, Zhou, Aihong, Wang, Fen, Xing, Yi, Jia, Jianping
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5944104/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29747584
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12883-018-1068-6
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author Li, Jieying
Wu, Liyong
Tang, Yi
Zhou, Aihong
Wang, Fen
Xing, Yi
Jia, Jianping
author_facet Li, Jieying
Wu, Liyong
Tang, Yi
Zhou, Aihong
Wang, Fen
Xing, Yi
Jia, Jianping
author_sort Li, Jieying
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a group of clinical syndromes characterized by visuospatial and visuoperceptual impairment, with memory relatively preserved. Although PCA is pathologically almost identical to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), they have different cognitive features. Those differences have only rarely been reported in any Chinese population. The purpose of the study is to establish neuropsychological tests that distinguish the clinical features of PCA from early onset AD (EOAD). METHODS: Twenty-one PCA patients, 20 EOAD patients, and 20 healthy controls participated in this study. Patients had disease duration of ≤4 years. All participants completed a series of neuropsychological tests to evaluate their visuospatial, visuoperceptual, visuo-constructive, language, executive function, memory, calculation, writing, and reading abilities. The cognitive features of PCA and EOAD were compared. RESULTS: All the neuropsychological test scores showed that both the PCA and EOAD patients were significantly more impaired than people in the control group. However, PCA patients were significantly more impaired than EOAD patients in visuospatial, visuoperceptual, and visuo-constructive function, as well as in handwriting, and reading Chinese characters. CONCLUSIONS: The profile of neuropsychological test results highlights cognitive features that differ between PCA and EOAD. One surprising result is that the two syndromes could be distinguished by patients’ ability to read and write Chinese characters. Tests based on these characteristics could therefore form a brief PCA neuropsychological examination that would improve the diagnosis of PCA.
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spelling pubmed-59441042018-05-14 Differentiation of neuropsychological features between posterior cortical atrophy and early onset Alzheimer’s disease Li, Jieying Wu, Liyong Tang, Yi Zhou, Aihong Wang, Fen Xing, Yi Jia, Jianping BMC Neurol Research Article BACKGROUND: Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a group of clinical syndromes characterized by visuospatial and visuoperceptual impairment, with memory relatively preserved. Although PCA is pathologically almost identical to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), they have different cognitive features. Those differences have only rarely been reported in any Chinese population. The purpose of the study is to establish neuropsychological tests that distinguish the clinical features of PCA from early onset AD (EOAD). METHODS: Twenty-one PCA patients, 20 EOAD patients, and 20 healthy controls participated in this study. Patients had disease duration of ≤4 years. All participants completed a series of neuropsychological tests to evaluate their visuospatial, visuoperceptual, visuo-constructive, language, executive function, memory, calculation, writing, and reading abilities. The cognitive features of PCA and EOAD were compared. RESULTS: All the neuropsychological test scores showed that both the PCA and EOAD patients were significantly more impaired than people in the control group. However, PCA patients were significantly more impaired than EOAD patients in visuospatial, visuoperceptual, and visuo-constructive function, as well as in handwriting, and reading Chinese characters. CONCLUSIONS: The profile of neuropsychological test results highlights cognitive features that differ between PCA and EOAD. One surprising result is that the two syndromes could be distinguished by patients’ ability to read and write Chinese characters. Tests based on these characteristics could therefore form a brief PCA neuropsychological examination that would improve the diagnosis of PCA. BioMed Central 2018-05-10 /pmc/articles/PMC5944104/ /pubmed/29747584 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12883-018-1068-6 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Li, Jieying
Wu, Liyong
Tang, Yi
Zhou, Aihong
Wang, Fen
Xing, Yi
Jia, Jianping
Differentiation of neuropsychological features between posterior cortical atrophy and early onset Alzheimer’s disease
title Differentiation of neuropsychological features between posterior cortical atrophy and early onset Alzheimer’s disease
title_full Differentiation of neuropsychological features between posterior cortical atrophy and early onset Alzheimer’s disease
title_fullStr Differentiation of neuropsychological features between posterior cortical atrophy and early onset Alzheimer’s disease
title_full_unstemmed Differentiation of neuropsychological features between posterior cortical atrophy and early onset Alzheimer’s disease
title_short Differentiation of neuropsychological features between posterior cortical atrophy and early onset Alzheimer’s disease
title_sort differentiation of neuropsychological features between posterior cortical atrophy and early onset alzheimer’s disease
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5944104/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29747584
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12883-018-1068-6
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