Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a type of dementia that often strikes during middle age, making it difficult to diagnose. Unlike Alzheimer’s disease, which mainly affects memory, FTD impacts personality, behavior, and language, sometimes leading doctors to mistake it for mental health conditions like depression or schizophrenia.
Because of its early onset and unusual symptoms, many people live for years without a proper diagnosis, losing valuable time for treatment and support.
Now, a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has uncovered new clues that could change the way FTD is diagnosed.
Their study, published in Nature Aging, focused on understanding the changes in brain chemistry that happen in people with FTD. The researchers hope these findings will not only help doctors diagnose FTD earlier but also lead to new treatments for this challenging condition.
To conduct their research, the team led by Rowan Saloner, Ph.D., a professor at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, analyzed samples of spinal fluid from 116 people with inherited forms of FTD. Inherited FTD is a genetic version of the disease, where family members carry specific genes that make them more likely to develop it.
This form of FTD is unique because it can be studied in living patients who are known to have the disease, unlike non-inherited cases, which can only be confirmed after death.
The team compared these spinal fluid samples with those from 39 healthy relatives who did not have FTD. They measured more than 4,000 different proteins in the fluid to look for patterns or changes that might be linked to the disease.
The results were striking: certain proteins were found at different levels in people with FTD compared to their healthy relatives. These proteins seem to be involved in two main problems in the brain: issues with RNA regulation and brain connectivity.
RNA regulation is a crucial process in the brain where genes are translated into the proteins that cells need to function. If this process goes wrong, it can affect everything from brain cell health to how well different parts of the brain communicate with each other.
The study found that people with FTD had noticeable disruptions in this process, suggesting that their brain cells were not producing or managing proteins correctly.
Additionally, the researchers found evidence of problems with brain connectivity. This means that the different regions of the brain were not communicating as they should, likely contributing to the symptoms of personality changes, language difficulties, and impaired judgment that are common in FTD patients.
Dr. Saloner explained the importance of these findings, highlighting that FTD often affects people when they are still working, raising families, and leading active lives.
Yet, unlike Alzheimer’s disease, there is currently no definitive way to diagnose FTD in living patients. Most diagnoses are made based on symptoms, which can easily be mistaken for other conditions, delaying proper treatment.
However, with these newly identified proteins, there is hope that doctors may soon have a way to diagnose FTD earlier and more accurately.
If certain proteins can be measured in spinal fluid as markers of the disease, doctors could detect FTD long before symptoms become severe. This could open the door for patients to join clinical trials for new therapies, access better resources, and plan for the future with more clarity.
Saloner is optimistic about the potential impact of this research. “If we’re able to identify FTD early on, perhaps using some of the proteins we’ve identified, we can direct patients to the right resources, get them into the right therapeutic trials, and, ultimately, we hope, provide them with precision treatments,” he said.
This research is a promising step forward in understanding FTD, a disease that has long remained mysterious and difficult to diagnose. With further study, these findings could lead to earlier detection, better treatments, and improved quality of life for those living with this challenging form of dementia.
If you care about dementia, please read studies that eating apples and tea could keep dementia at bay, and Olive oil: a daily dose for better brain health.
For more health information, please see recent studies what you eat together may affect your dementia risk, and time-restricted eating: a simple way to fight aging and cancer.
The research findings can be found in Nature Aging.
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