Alzheimer's disease
The most common cause of dementia. Its usual first manifestation is a disturbance of recent memory, to which disturbances of other cognitive functions are gradually added. Usually a disease of the elderly, but there are presenile and atypical forms (e.g. with prominent speech or behavioral disorders, etc.), but they are much less frequent. Currently available medications may help reduce disease progression for at least a year or two, although they are unlikely to significantly change the long-term course.
Cerebrovascular Cognitive Decline and Dementia
Here the cognitive impairment is the result of vascular damage to the brain and may be due to multiple infarctions, diffuse micro-ischemic encephalopathy, strategic infarcts, or other rare conditions. Alzheimer's disease coexists in at least half of patients (mixed dementia). There are also rare hereditary forms, often with presenile onset. These include diseases such as CADASIL, diseases of COL4A1 / A2, CARASIL, amyloid vascular disease and others. the exact diagnosis of which requires genetic testing.
Lewy body dementia
It is considered the second most common (after Alzheimer's disease) neurodegenerative cause of dementia in the elderly. It is characterized by a combination of dementia with parkinsonism, fluctuations of symptom severity even within a single day, REM sleep disturbances, delusions, hallucinations and frequent adverse effects to neuroleptic medication usage. Some medications used in Alzheimer's disease have good (perhaps better) efficacy in dementia with Lewy bodies than in Alzheimer's disease, especially in regard to behavioral disturbances.
Frontotemporal degeneration
A heterogeneous group of diseases most common in presenile age, with a common characteristic of frontal and / or temporal lobe involvement, sometimes asymmetric. It is expressed as dementia with severe and early behavioral disturbances (a major burden for the sufferer's family), speech disorder (primary progressive aphasia), associated with Parkinsonism or motor neuron disease, or a combination of the above.