This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Peter V. Rabins, MD
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions Baltimore, Md

JAMA. 1997;277(24):1933-1934.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—The important study by Stern and colleagues¹ provides useful data on which clinicians can base prognostic estimates for persons with Alzheimer disease. However, their finding that extrapyramidal signs and psychotic features at initial assessment predicted earlier nursing home placement and death suggests the possibility that some of these cases suffered from Lewy body dementia rather than Alzheimer disease. Early hallucinations, delusions, and extrapyramidal symptoms are now included in the diagnostic criteria for Lewy body dementia.^2,3 While autopsy confirmation of diagnosis is available for only half of the subjects, it would be useful to test the hypothesis that those with the most rapid progression and shortest time to nursing home placement had either Lewy bodies coexisting with neuritic plaques and neurofibrillary tangles or pure Lewy body dementia based on neuropathology. . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?