Clinical characteristics of Lewy body dementia in Chinese memory clinics

Lewy body dementia (LBD), consisting of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Parkinson's disease dementia (PDD), is the second most common type of neurodegenerative dementia in older people. The current study aimed to investigate the clinical characteristics of LBD in Chinese memory clinics.

A total of 8405 dementia medical records were reviewed, revealing 455 patients with LBD. Demographic data, neuropsychological scores, and the scale for Medial Temporal lobe Atrophy (MTA) were then analyzed from nine memory clinics in the China Lewy Body Disease Collaborative Alliance.

The clinical proportion of LBD among the subjects and among all dementia types was 5.4% (4.9-5.9%) and 7.3% (6.7-8.0%), respectively, with a mean onset age of 68.6 ± 8.4 years. Patients with DLB comprised 5.6% (n = 348, age of onset 69.1 ± 8.3), while PDD comprised 1.7% (n = 107, age of onset 66.7 ± 8.8) of all dementia cases. There were slightly more males than females with DLB (n = 177, 50.9%) and PDD (n = 62, 57.9%). Patients with DLB had a poorer performance compared to those with PDD on the MMSE (16.8 ± 7.1 vs. 19.5 ± 5.7, p = 0.001), the MoCA (11.4 ± 6.6 vs. 14.0 ± 5.8, p<0.001), the CDR (1.8 ± 0.7 vs. 1.6 ± 0.7, p = 0.002), and the MTA (1.8 ± 0.7 vs. 1.2 ± 0.6, p = 0.002). Diagnostic differences for LBD exist among the centers; their reported proportions of those with DLB ranged from 0.7 to 11.4 and those with PDD ranged from 0.0 to 2.9%.

Variations of diagnoses exists in different regions and the clinical proportion of LBD is likely to be underestimated in China and other regions.