Educational Background and Previous Brain Injury May Be Associated With Higher Risk of Frontotemporal Dementia - Neuroscience News

Additionally, researchers found those with FTD tend to be less educated than those with Alzheimer’s disease.

According to a recent study conducted at the University of Eastern Finland, patients with frontotemporal dementia were, on average, less educated than patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

In addition, FTD patients who did not carry a genetic mutation causing the disease were less educated and had a higher prevalence of cardiac disease compared to FTD patients carrying a mutation.

In addition to patients with FTD and patients with Alzheimer’s disease, the study included a control group that did not have a diagnosis of any neurodegenerative disease.

Based on the study, it seems that patients with different subtypes of the FTD spectrum, and patients with genetic and non-genetic disease, are different in terms of several risk factors.

The researchers compared Finnish FTD patients with patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and with healthy controls.

“Traumatic Brain Injury Associates with an Earlier Onset in Sporadic Frontotemporal Dementia” by Helmi Soppela et al.

“Modifiable potential risk factors in familial and sporadic frontotemporal dementia” by Helmi Soppela et al.

The possible associations of TBI with age of onset and disease duration were also evaluated in the whole FTD patient group or separately in the sporadic and genetic FTD groups.

Modifiable potential risk factors in familial and sporadic frontotemporal dementia

Only a few studies have evaluated modifiable risk factors for frontotemporal dementia (FTD)

Here, we evaluated several modifiable factors and their association with disease phenotype, genotype, and prognosis in a large study population including Finnish and Italian patients with FTD and control groups

In this case–control study, we compared the presence of several cardiovascular and other lifestyle-related diseases and education between Finnish and Italian patients with familial (n = 376) and sporadic (n = 654) FTD, between different phenotypes of FTD, and between a subgroup of Finnish FTD patients (n = 221) and matched Finnish patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) (n = 214) and cognitively healthy controls (HC) (n = 100)

Patients with sporadic FTD were less educated (p = 0.042, B = -0.560, 95% CI −1.101 to −0.019) and had more heart diseases (p < 0.001, OR = 2.265, 95% CI 1.502–3.417) compared to patients with familial FTD

Finnish FTD patients were less educated (p = 0.032, B = 0.755, 95% CI 0.064–1.466) compared with AD patients

Our study suggests distinct profiles of several modifiable factors in the FTD group depending on the phenotype and familial inheritance history and that especially sporadic FTD may be associated with modifiable risk factors