Contents
Alzheimer’s and dementia are mainly associated with old age and memory problems. However, this is only one face of these disorders. These diseases can attack earlier – even around forty. We are then dealing with early-onset dementia. Its first symptom is not necessarily memory loss. Where does “early dementia” come from and how does it manifest itself?
- The likelihood of dementia tends to increase with age, and problems usually begin after the age of 65, and dementia may attack sooner.
- Dementia in younger patients often has a different course than in older people, even if the causes are the same and the first symptoms do not have to be related to memory impairment.
- The first symptoms of “early” dementia can be non-specific, so that they can be mistaken for a stress response or menopause. Moreover, its symptoms depend on the specific form of the disease
- There are also atypical variants of Alzheimer’s disease that younger people are at greater risk of. What are the symptoms?
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Early-onset dementia. It can attack around «40»
Dementia, also known as dementia, is, in its simplest terms, a progressive difficulty in carrying out daily activities on your own. There are many reasons for this, but the most common is Alzheimer’s disease. While the likelihood of dementia tends to increase with age (but it is not a normal consequence of aging) and problems usually appear after the age of 65, this is not the only scenario. Dementia may attack earlier, that is, before the age of 65, and even in the vicinity of “40”. It is then said about the so-called early-onset dementia.
It is known that in her case the range of diseases that can cause disorders is wider than in dementia after the age of 65. Early-onset dementia is also more likely to be inherited (10% of cases), and many people with it do not have any other serious or long-term medical condition.
Data from Great Britain shows that over 850 people live in this country. people with dementia. Over 42 thousand is struggling with early-onset dementia.
Some of the causes of dementia in younger people are similar to those seen later in life. However, there are also those that occur more often before the above-mentioned age of 65. What’s more, dementia in younger patients is often different than in older patients, even if the causes are the same and the symptoms may not be related to memory. The early symptoms can be difficult to recognize or not so obvious that they are sometimes confused with the body’s response to stress, work or relationship problems, and menopausal signals. To make it harder, the symptoms depend on the specific form of early-onset dementia. We present them below.
Early-onset dementia. Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) – Symptoms
This type of dementia is caused by atrophic changes in the frontal lobes and parts of the temporal lobes of the brain. According to the leading UK dementia charity, the Alzheimer’s Society, FTD is much more common in younger people with dementia than in seniors. The most common diagnosis is between the ages of 45 and 65. In about 20-40 percent. in younger patients, the disease runs in a family.
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There are three types of FTD, in each of them the first disturbance signals are different. The most common is the so-called behavioral variant. And the main symptoms relate primarily to behavior and personality problems:
Inhibitions may be lost, patients become impulsive without thinking about the consequences (e.g., making rude comments about someone’s appearance).
Apathy may appear, that is, loss of interest in other people and the environment in general. People with this condition lose their motivation to do things they used to enjoy.
Difficulty concentrating: Patients are easily distracted and have difficulty planning, organizing, and making decisions (these problems may arise in the first place at work or with money management).
Increasingly weaker empathy: sick people lose the ability to understand what others may think or feel, they can even laugh at others’ problems, they become less friendly, they start to seem insensitive and selfish.
Obsessive behavior (e.g. repeating phrases or gestures, obsession with timing).
People with FTD especially feel the need to eat sweet, fatty foods or carbohydrates. They may also not control when to stop eating, drinking alcohol, or smoking.
In addition to the behavioral variant of FTD, there are also (although less frequently) the so-called progressive non-fluent aphasia (the symptom is communication problems, e.g. slow, uncertain speaking, grammatical errors) and semantic dementia (problems with understanding the language, e.g. difficulty in finding the right word).
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Three “atypical” forms of Alzheimer’s disease. What symptoms do they give?
It is impossible not to mention the atypical variants of Alzheimer’s disease, to which younger people are more at risk. They differ in symptoms, but – as in the case of FDP – memory deficits are not dominant here.
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One of the unusual forms of Alzheimer’s disease is the visual variant (PCA). The first symptoms usually appear around the age of 55 or in the early sixth decade of life. The dominant symptom in PSA is visual-spatial disturbances. So there may be difficulties in recognizing faces and objects in photos, problems in judging distances, problems with counting and writing. As brain damage progresses, the more common symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease develop, such as memory loss and confusion.
Another unusual variant of Alzheimer’s is called primary progressive aphasia (PPA), and more precisely its logopenic variant (speech therapy, i.e. impoverishment of speech). Put simply: it is a linguistic variant of Alzheimer’s disease. In this case, difficulties with the language can manifest themselves, for example, in problems with finding the right word or long pauses in speech.
The third form is debilitating Alzheimer’s disease. The first symptoms of a developing disease usually include difficulties in planning and making decisions, and behaving in a socially inappropriate manner.
According to the Alzheimer’s Society, one in three younger people with Alzheimer’s disease has one of the variants mentioned above. Among older patients (over 65 years of age) – one in 20 patients has an atypical form of the disease.
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