Researchers Define New Subtype of Alzheimer’s Disease

An atypical form of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) may be present in a more widespread number of patients. Researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida have defined a subtype of AD that they say is neither well-recognized, nor treated appropriately. The variant, called hippocampal sparing AD, made up 11 percent of the 1,821 AD-confirmed brains examined by Mayo Clinic researchers. The patients, mostly male, are afflicted at a much younger age, and their symptoms can be bizarre — behavioral problems or visual disturbances; they also decline at a much faster rate. “Many of these patients, however, have memories that are near normal, so clinicians often misdiagnose them with a variety of conditions that do not match the underlying neuropathology,” says the study’s lead author, Melissa Murray, PhD, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Mayo Clinic in Florida. Many of these patients are diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia or corticobasal syndrome; language dysfunction is also more common in hippocampal sparing AD. To learn more about the study, click here.