Symptom-based staging for logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia.
Eur J Neurol
; 31(7): e16304, 2024 Jul.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38666798
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:
Logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA) is a major variant presentation of Alzheimer's disease (AD) that signals the importance of communication dysfunction across AD phenotypes. A clinical staging system is lacking for the evolution of AD-associated communication difficulties that could guide diagnosis and care planning. Our aim was to create a symptom-based staging scheme for lvPPA, identifying functional milestones relevant to the broader AD spectrum.METHODS:
An international lvPPA caregiver cohort was surveyed on symptom development under an 'exploratory' survey (34 UK caregivers). Feedback from this survey informed the development of a 'consolidation' survey (27 UK, 10 Australian caregivers) in which caregivers were presented with six provisional clinical stages and feedback was analysed using a mixed-methods approach.RESULTS:
Six clinical stages were endorsed. Early symptoms included word-finding difficulty, with loss of message comprehension and speech intelligibility signalling later-stage progression. Additionally, problems with hearing in noise, memory and route-finding were prominent early non-verbal symptoms. 'Milestone' symptoms were identified that anticipate daily-life functional transitions and care needs.CONCLUSIONS:
This work introduces a new symptom-based staging scheme for lvPPA, and highlights milestone symptoms that could inform future clinical scales for anticipating and managing communication dysfunction across the AD spectrum.Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Aphasia, Primary Progressive
Limits:
Aged
/
Aged80
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Country/Region as subject:
Oceania
Language:
En
Journal:
Eur J Neurol
Journal subject:
NEUROLOGIA
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United kingdom