Overview
Frontotemporal dementia refers to a group of diseases that involve the deterioration of your brain’s frontal and temporal lobes. As those areas deteriorate, you lose the abilities those parts controlled. People with FTD commonly lose control of their behavior or ability to speak and understand spoken language.
People with FTD can fall under one of the three common symptom groups. Two of these are subtypes of primary progressive aphasia (PPA). PPA is a degenerative brain disease. Despite its name, it’s very different from the condition/symptom aphasia from conditions like stroke, which affects your ability to speak or understand spoken language. The three common symptom groups are:
- Behavioral-variant FTD (bvFTD).
- Semantic-variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA).
- Nonfluent/agrammatic primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA).
Additionally, FTD-related symptoms can occur with these conditions:
- FTD–ALS. When FTD is noted along with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
- Parkinsonian-like FTD syndromes. Parkinson’s disease along with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and corticobasal degeneration.
Who does it affect?
Frontotemporal dementia is an age-related condition, but it happens sooner than most age-related conditions that affect your brain. Most people develop FTD conditions between the ages of 50 and 80, and the average age when it starts is 58.
Overall, FTD appears to affect males and females equally. However, the three conditions under FTD don’t affect people assigned male at birth and people assigned female at birth equally. Males are more likely to develop bvFTD and svPPA, and females are more likely to develop nfvPP and corticobasal degeneration. FTD is also a condition that can run in families, with about 40% of cases happening in people with a family history of FTD.
How common is this condition?
FTD is an uncommon condition but happens often enough to be fairly well known. Experts estimate that it happens to between 15 and 22 people out of every 100,000. That means between 1.2 million and 1.8 million people have it worldwide.
How does this condition affect my body?
FTD affects your brain’s frontal and temporal lobes in the early and middle stages of the disease. As FTD affects those lobes, you lose certain abilities (listed below) because neurons in those areas stop working.
Your frontal lobe, located right behind your forehead, is responsible for the following:
- Movement.
- Planning and decision-making.
- Judgment and reasoning.
- Social skills.
- Spoken language.
- Knowing what’s appropriate and inappropriate.
- Self-control over what you do and say.
Your temporal lobes are on the sides of your brain, immediately below and behind your frontal lobe. It handles the following:
- Hearing.
- Understanding spoken language.
- Memory.
- Emotional expression and processing.
Symptoms
When to see a doctor
Complications
- High blood pressure.
- Diabetes.
- Heart failure.
- Some types of heart valve disease.
Prevention
- Control high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.
- Don't smoke or use tobacco.
- Eat a diet that's low in salt and saturated fat.
- Exercise at least 30 minutes a day on most days of the week unless your health care team says not to.
- Get good sleep. Adults should aim for 7 to 9 hours daily.
- Maintain a healthy weight.
- Reduce and manage stress.
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