Magnetic resonance imaging reveals Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in a patient with apparent dementia with Lewy bodies.

The differential diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) may be challenging. Patients with the original diagnosis of possible CJD may occasionally prove to have a pathological diagnosis of DLB, while other cases may fulfill the diagnostic clinical criteria for DLB but subsequent clinical course, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and neuropathology findings necessitate diagnostic revision to CJD. We describe a 79-year old patient recently diagnosed with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) on the basis of subacute cognitive decline, visual hallucinations and Parkinsonian features, who presented with increasing agitation. Brain neuroimaging with MRI raised the diagnostic suspicion of CJD and subsequent diagnostic work-up with electroencephalography (EEG) and CSF analysis led to the establishment of CJD diagnosis. The present case highlights the clinical utility of novel diagnostic CJD criteria that also incorporate neuroimaging findings in the diagnostic CJD panel.

A longitudinal study of alterations of hippocampal volumes and serum BDNF levels in association to atypical antipsychotics in a sample of first-episode patients with schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia is associated with structural and functional abnormalities of the hippocampus, which have been suggested to play an important role in the formation and emergence of schizophrenia syndrome. Patients with schizophrenia exhibit significant bilateral hippocampal volume reduction and progressive hippocampal volume decrease in first-episode patients with schizophrenia has been shown in many neuroimaging studies. Dysfunction of the neurotrophic system has been implicated in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. The initiation of antipsychotic medication alters the levels of serum Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) levels. However it is unclear whether treatment with antipsychotics is associated with alterations of hippocampal volume and BDNF levels. METHODS: In the present longitudinal study we investigated the association between serum BDNF levels and hippocampal volumes in a sample of fourteen first-episode drug-naïve patients with schizophrenia (FEP). MRI scans, BDNF and clinical measurements were performed twice: at baseline before the initiation of antipsychotic treatment and 8 months later, while the patients were receiving monotherapy with second generation antipsychotics (SGAs). RESULTS: We found that left hippocampal volume was decreased (corrected left HV [t = 2.977, df = 13, p = .011] at follow-up; We also found that the higher the BDNF levels change the higher were the differences of corrected left hippocampus after 8 months of treatment with atypical antipsychotics (Pearson r = 0.597, p = 0.024). CONCLUSIONS: The association of BDNF with hippocampal volume alterations in schizophrenia merits further investigation and replication in larger longitudinal studies.