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Anonymous ID: 898348 Aug. 18, 2020, 6:49 a.m. No.10329682   🗄️.is 🔗kun

Symptoms

Initial symptoms of FTD are primarily changes in personality and behavior. In addition to the symptoms described below, FTD patients often present two seemingly opposite behavioral profiles in the early and middle stages of the disease. Some individuals are overactive, restless, distractible, and disinhibited. Others are apathetic, inert, aspontaneous, and emotionally blunted. These differences in outward activity disappear in the late stages of the disease.

 

Major symptoms of FTD are:

 

Dramatic change in personal and social conduct. The individual may lack initiative, seem unconcerned, and neglect domestic, financial, and occupational responsibilities.

Loss of empathy toward others.

Patients may show shallow affect (flat facial expression or lack of emotional response). Or they may be inappropriately jocular and sing, dance, clap, or recite phrases repeatedly.

Rigid and inflexible thinking and impaired judgment.

Loss of insight into personal and social misconduct, such as small sexual or moral transgressions.

Stereotyped (i.e., repetitive) or compulsive behavior. For example, the person with FTD may become compulsive about rituals of hygiene and dress while at the same time neglecting proper hygiene. They may echo what others say, wander restlessly over a fixed route, or adhere to a fixed daily schedule.

Hypochondriasis, including bizarre somatic complaints.

Excessive eating or gluttony, food fads (especially a craving for sweet foods), and even excessive alcohol consumption. (The tendency of FTD patients to consume alcohol often leads to a misdiagnosis of alcohol-related dementia.) The person may refuse to eat, however, due to a behavioral pattern called “negativism” or to inability to use motor skills needed for eating.

Decreased motor skills in later stages.

Change in sleep patterns, with prolonged sleepiness shown, especially in those that present more apathetic behaviors.

In late stage FTD symptoms include:

 

A gradual reduction in speech, culminating in mutism.

Hyperoral traits.

Failure or inability to make motor responses to verbal commands.

Akinesia (loss of muscle movement) and rigidity with death due to complications of immobility.

Anonymous ID: 898348 Aug. 18, 2020, 6:50 a.m. No.10329687   🗄️.is 🔗kun

The length of FTD varies, with some patients declining rapidly over two to three years, and others showing only minimal changes over a decade. Studies have shown persons with FTD to live with the disease an average of eight years, with a range from three years to 17 years.

 

No medications are known currently to treat or prevent FTD. Serotonin-boosting medications may alleviate some behaviors.