Dementia refers to a large number of disorders characterized by global cognitive deficits, including impairments of recent memory, and one or more of the following: aphasia, apraxia, agnosia, and disturbance of executive functioning. The most common dementias are Alzheimer’s disease (AD), vascular dementia, dementia due to general medical conditions (including HIV dementia), head trauma, Parkinson’s disease (PD), Huntington’s disease, Pick’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, substance-induced persisting dementia, and multiple etiologies. Alzheimer’s disease, alone or in combination with other conditions (e.g., stroke), is easily the most common. With the exception of dementia associated with Parkinson’s disease, the remaining syndromes are either so rare or heterogeneous that it is difficult to find well-controlled studies that would meet diagnostic and clinical design criteria for standards defined for this book. The focus of this chapter is on therapeutic interventions for Alzheimer’s disease. Innumerable articles investigating patient populations defined as “geropsychiatric” or “gerontopsychiatric” have been excluded. Following this discussion, there is a brief review of therapeutic interventions for Parkinson’s disease.
Body-first Parkinson’s disease and variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease – similar or different?
