Abstract
Up to 20% of patients with behavioural variants of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) also
have motor neuron disease (MND); conversely, this comorbidity is rare in patients
with language variants of FTD. A few patients have been reported with semantic dementia
(SD) combined with MND. However, these patients demonstrated the clinical features
of MND in the advanced stage. We report a patient with SD who also demonstrated MND
symptoms in an earlier stage of the disease. A 61-year-old man visited our memory
disorder clinic as a result of language disturbance and dysarthria of 8 months duration
and facial recognition impairment of 3 months duration. Neuropsychological tests revealed
anomic aphasia, prosopagnosia, and decreased semantic fluency. A brain MRI revealed
significant atrophies localized in both anterior temporal lobes with a greater prominence
on the right side. Clinical examination and electrophysiological studies confirmed
a diagnosis of MND 17 months after the onset of the disease.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
May 4,
2009
Received:
December 2,
2008
Identification
Copyright
© 2009 Elsevier Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
