Primary Progressive Aphasia in Northeast Brazil

Abstract

All 29 patients underwent structural neuroimaging examination. With the advent of analysis cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers, the authors were able to perform this in 38% of cases, with 45% having Alzheimer's pathology, 36% tau protein pathology, 9% having normal biomarkers, and 9% having increased β-amyloid protein alone. With technological developments, 55% of cases underwent brain single photon perfusion scintigraphy (SPECT) studies (81%) and brain PET/SCAN (19%). The clinical results were 43% compatible with the logopenic variant, 36% with the semantic variant, and 21% with the non-fluent variant. Around 3% of cases occurred due to a mutation in exon 5 of the VCP gene. Around 10% of cases underwent post-mortem studies, with Alzheimer's disease (logopenic variant) confirmed in 33%, Pick's disease (non-fluent variant) in 33%, and cortico-basal degeneration (variant not fluent).