Citation

Fremont R, Grafman J, Huey ED. Am. J. Alzheimers Dis. Other Demen. 2020; 35: e1533317520925982.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1533317520925982

PMID

32519563

Abstract

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a neurodegenerative syndrome characterized by degenerative changes in behavior, executive function, and/or language that are accompanied by volume loss in frontal and anterior temporal brain regions.1 Neuropsychiatric symptoms are a prominent feature of this disorder and can include apathy, behavioral disinhibition, loss of empathy, compulsive behaviors, and others.2 Overall frequency of formal current or past psychiatric disorder diagnosis is not thought to be increased in patients with FTD3 although this is somewhat controversial.4 Regarding depression, a meta-analysis in 2015 exploring the prevalence of depressive symptoms in FTD found that depressed mood is likely elevated in patients compared to healthy age matched controls and as prevalent in FTD as in other dementias including Alzheimer disease, vascular dementia, and dementia with Lewy bodies.5 Also, it is known that patients with dementia have a 3 to 10-fold increased risk of death by suicide.6 However, there have been few studies examining the prevalence of suicidality in FTD patients specifically.

Addressing this knowledge gap, a recent paper7 reported that patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) have significantly elevated suicidal ideation and suicide attempts when compared to healthy age and education matched controls. An earlier 2014 retrospective study of suicidal behavior in FTD patients similarly reported that suicidal behaviors were increased in FTD patients when compared to age and gender matched controls.8 However, both of these studies focused on patients with significant dementia and did not explore whether genetics might play a role in suicidality of FTD patients.

We wondered whether a similar increase in suicidality would be present in early/prodromal FTD patients with MAPT mutations that result in behavioral variant (bv)FTD with a high prevalence. We performed structured ...

Language: en

Keywords

dementia; suicide; frontotemporal dementia; neuropsychiatry