Dementia with Lewy bodies: old and new knowledge - Part 1: clinical aspects and diagnostics

Background: Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is the second most common neurodegenerative dementia after Alzheimer's disease. Patients with DLB often have a poor prognosis, with worse outcomes than patients with Alzheimer's disease in terms of important parameters, such as quality of life, caregiver burden, health-related costs, frequency of hospital and nursing home admissions, shorter time to severe dementia, and lower survival. The DLB is frequently misdiagnosed and often undertreated. Therefore, it is critical to diagnose DLB as early as possible to ensure optimal care and treatment.Objective: The aim of this review article is to summarize the main recent findings on diagnostic tools, epidemiology and genetics of DLB.Results: Precise clinical diagnostic criteria exist for DLB that enable an etiologic assignment. Imaging techniques are used as standard in DLB, especially also to exclude non-neurodegenerative causes. In particular, procedures in nuclear medicine have a high diagnostic value.Discussion: The diagnosis is primarily based on clinical symptoms, although the development of in vivo neuroimaging and biomarkers is changing the scope of clinical diagnosis as well as research into this devastating disease.