October is Lewy Body Awareness Month

What is Lewy body dementia?

Lewy body dementia occurs because of abnormal deposits of a protein called alpha-synuclein that develop inside the brain’s nerve cells. The deposits are called ‘Lewy bodies’ after the scientist who first described them, Dr. Freidrich Heinrich Lewy.

Lewy body dementia accounts for between 5% and 10% of all dementia diagnoses.

These protein deposits – or Lewy bodies – typically affect areas of the brain involved in thinking and movement. The built-up mass of Lewy bodies blocks messages between brain cells, which leads to dementia.

Lewy bodies are also found in Parkinson’s disease, and this disease shares many similarities with Lewy body dementia.

Symptoms

Lewy body dementia can cause symptoms that are similar to both Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. These symptoms can include:

• A progressive loss of memory, language, reasoning and other higher cognitive functions, like the ability to calculate numbers
• Difficulties with planning, organizing, and marked fluctuations in attention and alertness (which may be some of the first symptoms)
• Changes to visual-spatial perception
• Difficulty with short-term memory, finding the right words to use or maintaining a train of thought
• Depression and anxiety
• Changes in sleeping patterns, including feeling tired during the day and alert throughout the night
• Visual hallucinations and seeing things that are not real (hallucinations often include people, children and animals who are not present)
• Mistakes in perception of objects or textures (for example, seeing faces in a carpet pattern)
• Motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, which may include stiffness of muscles, tremors (shaking), stooped posture or slow, shuffling movements
• Acting out dreams

Diagnosis

No single test can diagnose Lewy body dementia.

Doctors typically diagnose Lewy body dementia by eliminating other diseases and conditions that cause similar symptoms.

Common assessments can include a neurological exam to assess:

• The way a person walks (referred to as a ‘gait analysis’)
• Posture
• How rigid or stiff the person’s body is