My daily feed screener picked up a report of a screening tool for Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) today.
LBD is often confused with Alzheimer's disease. Distinguishing the two is important for management and selection of appropriate drug treatment.
This research is not published in a free full-text manuscript format but there is a link to the scale for readers with more interest.
The research study examined the validity of a newly developed scale called the Lewy Body Composite Risk Score or LBCRS.
This score is calculated from a ten-item yes-no questionnaire that includes questions on the presence or absence of:
- Movement initiation difficulty
- Muscular rigidity
- Postural instability with frequent falls
- Tremor at rest
- Excessive daytime sleepiness
- Illogical, incoherent thought
- Staring or blank look spells
- Visual hallucinations
- Acting out dreams
- Orthostatic hypotension/autonomic insufficiency
Using a cutoff score of 3 positive responses yielded a high discrimination of LBD from Alzheimer's disease in a group of 256 patients.
The link to the scale and administration directions can be found here.
Accurate tools for identifying LBD are needed and this scale may be helpful for clinicians. It will be interesting to follow to see if this study can be replicated in another sample.
Figure of brain basal ganglia commonly affected in LBD is an iPad screenshot from the app 3D Brain from the author's files.
Follow the author on Twitter WRY999
Galvin JE (2015). IMPROVING THE CLINICAL DETECTION OF LEWY BODY DEMENTIA WITH THE LEWY BODY COMPOSITE RISK SCORE. Alzheimer's & dementia (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1 (3), 316-324 PMID: 26405688
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