Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder predominantly affecting the frontal and temporal regions of the brain, although the pathology may be more general.  In the absence of a diagnostic test, the diagnosis of FTD remains clinically and pathologically based.  Recently, novel clinical and pathological criteria have been developed to encompass the heterogeneous nature of FTD.  In this issue of JNNP, Chare and colleagues report on the validity of these new criteria in a large international cohort of FTD/dementia.  In this must read manuscript, the pathological validation of criteria was established and  clinical features such as disinhibition, food preferences and naming, though to be diagnostically useful, did not differentiate different forms of FTD.

Read more at:  http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/85/8/865.full

New criteria for frontotemporal dementia syndromes: clinical and pathological diagnostic implications