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Updated: Feb 9, 2026

Using Retinal Imaging to Study Dementia
Published on: November 6, 2017
Associations between ZnT3, tau pathology, agitation, and delusions in dementia
David R Whitfield1,2, Paul T Francis1, Clive Ballard2
1Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
Objective:
Neuropsychiatric symptoms such as agitation and delusions occur frequently in Lewy body dementia and Alzheimer's disease and represent significant burden and unmet treatment need. The underlying aetiology remains poorly understood.
Methods:
We used a multidimensional linear model to look for associations between measurements of agitation, delusions, amyloid, tau and α-synuclein pathology, and synaptic proteins (ZnT3, PSD95, synaptophysin, and β-III-tubulin) across multiple brain regions in post-mortem tissue from a cohort of 130 Lewy body dementia and Alzheimer's disease patients and non-demented controls.
Results:
We found both agitations and delusions to be significantly associated with increased tau pathology and decreased levels of ZnT3. ZnT3 packages Zn2+ into synaptic vesicles to be released as a long-term modulator of synaptic activity.
Conclusions:
Our finding adds to the evidence that zinc modulating compounds are of interest for treatment or symptomatic relief in these dementias.
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