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Aim: Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is a common but underdiagnosed type of cognitive impairment and dementia. The current diagnostic criteria for research purposes have a high specificity but lack sensitivity. Moreover, patients who live alone are not always aware that they have core clinical features such as cognitive fluctuations, visual hallucinations, and parasomnia. Anxiety is a common and early manifestation in DLB. Methods: We matched 41 DLB patients with 41 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) according to gender, age, and cognitive status and retrospectively analyzed their files for the presence of anxiety, depression, constipation, and the core clinical features of DLB in the documented period before diagnosis. Results: Anxiety, but not depression, occurred significantly more frequently in DLB than in AD (63.4% vs 26.8%). It appears up to 4-5 years before the diagnosis of DLB and is associated with depression and living at home. Anxiety in DLB was often described as intermittent panic attacks without reason or during states of delirium; it was also severe enough to require medical treatment and inpatient or outpatient psychiatric care. It was often mistaken for a psychiatric illness or a manifestation of other common forms of dementia. Anxiety in AD seemed much milder, was often related to the patient's coping with cognitive dysfunction, and was never cited as a specific reason for medical help. The concomitant presence of anxiety with at least one core clinical criterion of DLB enabled us to differentiate it from AD in our study, with a sensitivity of 63.4% but a specificity of 100%. Conclusions: In all patients over 50 who present with cognitive problems and anxiety, DLB should be considered. Patients and informants should be carefully questioned regarding the presence of other typical signs and symptoms of DLB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autoimmune encephalopathy is a rare but potentially reversible cause of cognitive deterioration and neuropsychiatric disturbances. We describe two older female patients with subacute cognitive decline and marked neuropsychiatric disturbances in the presence of high serum anti-thyroid peroxidase antibodies and with normal dosage of free thyroxine 4. One patient recovered almost completely after oral corticotherapy. Differential diagnosis and the role of biomarkers, in particular, are discussed. We support a pragmatic approach involving a short empirical therapeutic trial with intravenous or oral corticoids; this should be considered in all patients with subacute encephalopathy and with laboratory arguments for an underlying autoimmune aetiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on direct comparison of the 2005 and 2017 criteria for dementia with Lewy bodies. It mentions diagnosis of probable DLB was to be made when a patient had dementia with at least two of three core features, namely recurrent visual hallucinations, fluctuating cognition, and/or spontaneous parkinsonism.

The article describes the case of a woman with Alzheimer's disease (AD) occurring with Lewy body disease (LBD) who developed Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (TC) following an acute episode of anxiety. Topics covered include the patient's medical history, the findings of the physical neurological and laboratory examinations, and patient outcome after treatment with furosemide and paroxetine after diagnosis and levodopa eighteen months after the diagnosis.

The article presents case study of two patients with varying clinical histories of cognitive impairment and rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (RSBD) in which the first patient presented with recurrent visual hallucinations and the second with fluctuating cognition and parkinsonism. It mentions the role of Myocardial metaiodobenzylguanidine tomoscintigraphy for the diagnosis of Lewy body disease.