Three-Minute Test Detects Lewy Body Dementia
A neuroscientist at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton has designed a 3-minute test he says clinicians can use to detect Lewy Body dementia and Parkinson’s disease dementia. In a study in the recent Alzheimer’s Dementia, the Lewy Body Composite Risk Score discriminated between Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy Body disease with 96.8% accuracy.
“Most patients never receive an evaluation by a neurologist skilled in the diagnosis of Lewy Body dementia, and significant delays and misdiagnoses occur in most patients with this disease,” said test developer and professor James E. Galvin, MD, MPH. “This new tool has the potential to provide a clearer, more accurate picture for those patients who are unable to be seen by specialists, hastening the correct diagnosis and reducing the strain and burden placed on patients and caregivers.”
The page-long tool gauges clinical signs and symptoms highly associated with Lewy Body disease. Clinicians assess whether a patient has bradykinesia, rigidity, postural instability, or rest tremor without needing to grade each extremity. The survey provides structured yes-or-no questions for 6 non-motor features common in patients with Lewy Body disease but not in patients with other forms of dementia.
For the study, results from the Lewy Body Composite Risk Score for 256 patients were compared with results from the Clinical Dementia Rating and gold standard measures of cognition, motor symptoms, function, and behavior. In addition to distinguishing Lewy Body dementia from Alzheimer’s disease with nearly 97% accuracy, the Lewy Body Composite Risk Score provided sensitivity of 90% and specificity of 87%.
“Early detection of Lewy Body dementias will be important to enable future interventions at the earliest stages when they are likely to be most effective,” said Dr. Galvin. “Our study provides evidence-based methodology that will have applications in clinical practice, participation in clinical trials, prevention studies, community surveys, and biomarkers research.”
—Jolynn Tumolo
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