Can you explain briefly, in laymans terms, what frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is?
Dr. Bruce Miller: Frontotemporal dementia is a degenerative disease that affects the anterior portions of the brain. It’s slowly progressive and leads to gradual loss of functions in the frontal lobes and anterior temporal lobes. It is often a genetic, familial disease and in approximately 40 percent of cases it is inherited like a dominant gene. So, if a parent had it in such families then about 1 in 2 of the children are likely to become sick with the illness. When you ask for a family history, would most people have considered the illness to be Alzheimer’s disease or some form of dementia rather than inherited? In other cases, people think of it as being a primary psychiatric problem. So, in some of these families you hear that their father had alcohol dementia or was criminally insane or committed suicide or had some sort of psychiatric illness that was not considered a dementia. How many people in the US are believed to have FTD? It is very hard to determine an exact prevalence fo
