Dementia is often thought of as a condition that mainly affects older people. But when it strikes in middle age, it can be harder to detect.
One of the most common forms in younger adults is frontotemporal dementia (FTD). It’s often confused with other conditions like depression, schizophrenia, or Parkinson’s disease, which delays proper diagnosis.
Now, scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have discovered new clues that may help doctors recognize FTD earlier. Their study, published on May 16 in the journal Nature Aging, could lead to better ways to diagnose the disease in living patients and help more people get into clinical trials for new treatments.
The research team studied the spinal fluid of 116 people with inherited forms of FTD and compared it to the fluid of 39 of their healthy family members.
This kind of spinal fluid is collected through a procedure called a spinal tap and contains thousands of proteins. By looking at more than 4,000 different proteins, the scientists hoped to find differences linked to FTD.
All 116 patients had a known genetic cause for their FTD. This was important because inherited forms of FTD can be diagnosed in living patients, unlike non-inherited FTD, which can only be confirmed after death. This gave the researchers a rare chance to study real-time changes in the brain and spinal fluid of people with the disease.
They found that many of the proteins in the spinal fluid were linked to problems with RNA regulation. RNA helps turn genes into the proteins our cells need to function. If RNA doesn’t work properly, brain cells may stop functioning or even die.
The researchers also found signs of problems in how brain cells connect and communicate. These protein changes could be some of the first clear biological markers of FTD in people, appearing in middle age as the disease starts to take hold.
Dr. Rowan Saloner, lead author and professor at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, said that FTD can be devastating because it affects people in the middle of their lives, often while they are still working and raising families.
He explained that there is currently no reliable test to diagnose FTD in living patients, unlike Alzheimer’s disease, which can now be diagnosed with scans and blood tests.
Dr. Saloner hopes that the proteins identified in this study could lead to a test for FTD that doctors can use to catch the disease early. This could help patients get proper care and enroll in clinical trials that are testing new treatments. The goal is to one day provide precise therapies tailored to each patient’s specific form of dementia.
The participants in the study came from the ALLFTD Consortium, a large research group focused on frontotemporal dementia. It includes experts from UCSF and the Mayo Clinic, including Dr. Adam Boxer, Dr. Howie Rosen, and Dr. Brad Boeve. The senior author of the study is Dr. Kaitlin Casaletto, also from UCSF.
In summary, this research brings us closer to understanding how FTD begins and how to spot it earlier. With better tools for diagnosis, more patients may soon be able to access new treatments that could slow or manage this challenging disease.
If you care about dementia, please read studies about People who take high blood pressure medications have lower dementia risk and findings of Early indicators of dementia: 5 behaviour changes to look for after age 50.
For more about dementia, please read studies about Common drug for constipation is linked to higher dementia risk and findings of Scientists find link between heartburn drugs and increased dementia risk.
The study is published in Nature Aging.
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