1. Galantamine in Frontotemporal Dementia and Primary Progressive Aphasia
- Author
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Mervin Blair, Wilda Davidson, Sarah Jesso, R. Brashear, D. Morlog, Andrew Kertesz, and M. Light
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,Neuropsychological Tests ,Severity of Illness Index ,Primary progressive aphasia ,Double-Blind Method ,Aphasia ,Internal medicine ,mental disorders ,medicine ,Galantamine ,Humans ,Language disorder ,Psychiatry ,Western Aphasia Battery ,Aged ,Aged, 80 and over ,Cognitive disorder ,Middle Aged ,medicine.disease ,nervous system diseases ,Psychiatry and Mental health ,Aphasia, Primary Progressive ,Clinical Global Impression ,Dementia ,Female ,Cholinesterase Inhibitors ,Geriatrics and Gerontology ,medicine.symptom ,Psychology ,medicine.drug ,Frontotemporal dementia - Abstract
Background/Aims: The treatment of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) has been mainly symptomatic. Small randomized or open-label case control studies of neurotransmitters have been inconclusive. We tried galantamine in the 2 most common varieties of FTD. Method: Thirty-six behavioral variety FTD and primary progressive aphasia (PPA) patients were treated in an open-label period of 18 weeks and a randomized, placebo-controlled phase for 8 weeks with galantamine. The primary efficacy measures were the Frontal Behavioral Inventory, the Aphasia Quotient of the Western Aphasia Battery, the Clinical Global Impression of Severity and the Clinical Global Impression of Improvement. Results: No significant differences in behavior or language were found for the total group. A treatment effect (p = 0.009), in a subgroup of subjects with PPA in the global severity score, in favor of galantamine was detected in the placebo-controlled withdrawal phase but was not considered significant after correction for multiple comparisons. The language scores for the treated PPA group also remained stable compared to the placebo group, which showed deterioration. Conclusion: Galantamine is not effective in the behavioral variety of FTD, but a trend of efficacy is shown in the aphasic subgroup, which may be clinically significant. Galantamine appeared safe in FTD/PPA.
- Published
- 2008