New Dementia Diagnostic Exams and Gene Findings Bode Well for Treatment
The number of people affected by dementias continues to climb as baby boomers age, increasing the urgency to identify ways to prevent, diagnose and treat these neurodegenerative brain disorders.
Today it is possible to diagnose dementias more accurately than ever before, thanks to improvements in behavioral assessment tools, imaging techniques, gene testing and data collection and analysis, according to Bruce L. Miller, MD, a behavioral neurologist and professor of neurology at UCSF.
Miller, who came to UCSF in 1998 and directs the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, described recent advances during the lecture he gave at UCSF Mission Bay on Oct. 15 as part of receiving the Academic Senate’s 12th Annual Faculty Research Lectureship in Clinical Science.
The ability to diagnose different types of dementias accurately and to distinguish among the biological factors that cause them will become increasingly important as treatments become more promising and better targeted, Miller said.
Despite continued improvements in the tools available to physicians for diagnosing dementias, a common neurodegenerative disease known as frontotemporal dementia (FTD) remains understudied and is very often misdiagnosed, Miller said. For reasons that are in part historical, FTD still is thought of as a rare disease, a misconception that greatly contributes to its being underdiagnosed, he said. While Alzheimer’s disease is the most common dementia overall, among the population aged 65 and younger, FTD is just as common, according to Miller.
