Research Advances in Pick’s Disease: A New Biomarker Candidate

Abstract

Copyright: © 2013 Hu W, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The eponym Pick’s disease (PiD) was named after Arnold Pick, a German neurologist, who first described this rare neurodegenerative disease in 1892 [1]. Current knowledge indicates that PiD is a member of a group of heterogeneous neurodegenerative disorders with similar or related histopathologic and clinical features known as frontotemporal lobal degeneration or dementia (FTD) [2,3]. FTD may also be called Pick complex [3] including PiD, primary progressive aphasia, semantic dementia, FTD with parkinsonism (FTDP) linked with chromosome-17, FTD with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (FTDALS) linked to a newly identified gene named as C9ORF72 in the chromosome 9 open reading frame 72 [4], corticobasal degeneration (CBD) [5], and others [2,3]. FTD is the first or second most common cause of dementia among individuals younger than 60 years and the fourth most common cause of dementia in the USA. It has been noted that the incidence rates of FTD in 100,000 were 2.2 for ages 40 to 49, 3.3 for ages 50 to 59, and 8.9 for ages 60 to 69 [6], and range between 4% and 20% within dementia and 12% before the age of 65 [7]. Autopsy findings showed the occurrence between 2% and 20% [7-9]. Prevalence was estimated as 15 per 100,000 (8.4 to 27.0) in the 45to 64-year-old population [10,11]. PiD affects in individuals between the ages of 40 and 60 years old but can be seen individuals between 20 to 80 years old. A striking male preponderance (14:3) has been noted [11].