To lump, split, or seek molecular biomarkers for PPA subtypes? That is the question.
To identify clinicopathological correlations in patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA), researchers examined the underlying histopathology in 18 patients with a range of PPA syndromes from whom autopsy tissue was available. In all patients, language impairment was the most salient clinical symptom during the first 2 years of illness.
The authors set forth new or revised classification criteria for six progressive syndromes and retrospectively classified the patients accordingly: anarthria (in 5 patients), agrammatic aphasia (6 patients), logopenic aphasia (1 patient), jargon aphasia (2 patients), typical semantic dementia (2 patients), and atypical semantic dementia (2 patients). Anarthria was associated with tau pathology, agrammat…