Two cases of food aversion with semantic dementia

Accounts of altered eating behavior in semantic dementia generally emphasize gluttony and abnormal food preferences. Here we describe two female patients with no past history of eating disorders who developed early prominent aversion to food in the context of an otherwise typical semantic dementia syndrome. One patient (aged 57) presented features in line with anorexia nervosa while the second patient (aged 58) presented with a syndrome more suggestive of bulimia nervosa. These cases add to the growing spectrum of apparently dichotomous behavior patterns in the frontotemporal dementias and illustrate a potentially under-recognized cause of eating disorders presenting in later life.