We have just learned that the American actor Bruce Willis suffers from frontotemporal dementia.
The actor’s health problems already came from afar, since a year ago he announced his withdrawal from the cinema because of the aphasia he suffered. And it is that both pathologies are closely related, according to the experts of the
To understand what the protagonist of the legendary Die Hard movies is suffering from, neurologists explain what aphasia consists of and what its relationship is with frontotemporal dementia.
What is aphasia?
The one produced as a consequence of an injury or an alteration in the functioning of the parts of the brain responsible for expression, comprehension, reading and/or writing.
Aphasia can affect any age, but it is more common for it to affect adults, especially over 60 years of age.
In Spain, and according to data from the SEN, more than 350,000 people suffer from aphasia and about 25,000 new cases occur each year.
Depending on the brain areas in which the lesion is located and the degree of these lesions, aphasia can have different types of severity and the patient will manifest different language problems:
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Some people with aphasia have problems using words or building sentences.
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Other people may have trouble understanding others.
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There are patients who experience both expression and comprehension problems.
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And problems with reading and writing may also appear.
But neurologists point out that aphasia is not considered a disease but a symptom that a brain injury has occurred.
This injury that can be due to various causes, and among the most frequent from the SEN stand out:
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Having suffered a
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He has suffered a head injury.
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It may be caused by an infection, such as a .
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Because of a brain tumor.
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Or by some type of neurodegenerative disease, such as Parkinson’s or some type of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s or the frontotemporal dementia that Bruce Willis suffers from.
If the aphasia has been caused by a neurodegenerative disease, which in these cases is called progressive aphasia, the patient will gradually worsen as the disease progresses.
Progressive aphasia is, therefore, the mode of presentation of various neurodegenerative diseases, and unlike other causes that produce aphasia suddenly, in these cases the symptoms begin gradually and the language disorder is the most prominent symptom.
Therefore, when a person suffers from progressive aphasia, it is usually related to either a variant of Alzheimer’s disease or some types of frontotemporal dementia.
What is frontotemporal dementia?
It is a group of disorders related to degeneration of the frontal or temporal lobes of the brain, which include brain tissue related to speech and language.
Among the types of frontotemporal dementia that cause language problems, the SEN neurologists list 3:
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Primary progressive aphasia.
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semantic insanity.
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progressive agrammatic aphasia
Among them, the most common is primary progressive aphasia, which is a neurodegenerative syndrome characterized by a progressive deterioration of language, while, initially, the rest of the cognitive functions are preserved.
The usual age of onset of primary progressive aphasia is considered to be around 50 to 70 years. In the case of the American actor, the symptoms appeared at the age of 67.
In Spain it is estimated that frontotemporal dementia affects 0.2-0.3% of the population over 65 years of age, of which 20-40% would correspond to cases with primary progressive aphasia.
Its approach is symptomatic, that is, it is aimed at controlling the symptoms, since it lacks specific treatment and there is currently no evidence that any treatment can modify the course of the disease.
Frontotemporal dementia is the third most common cause of neurodegenerative dementia, after Lewy body disease and dementia.