In Case You Haven't Heard…

Abstract

Lifestyle changes may combat a dementia that strikes people in their 40s and 50s, CNN Health reported Jan. 8. Frontotemporal dementia strikes early, typically in the 50s, sometimes as young as age 45. Unlike Alzheimer's, it doesn't affect memory, instead attacking the parts of the brain that control thinking, reasoning and emotions. A person might ignore their spouse's or children's feelings, get uncharacteristically frustrated and say or do inappropriate things — such as laugh at a funeral. Science has struggled to provide interventions to help these patients. A new study suggests lifestyle changes may help slow the disease progression. Neurologist Kaitlin Casaletto, an assistant professor in the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleagues followed the activity levels of 105 people with the inherited form of the disease, the first study to do so in this population. They found people who ranked highest in levels of mental and physical activity slowed their functional decline from the disease by half.