Clinical Manifestations

Alzheimers Dement. 2025 Dec;21 Suppl 3:e098024. doi: 10.1002/alz70857_098024.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Functional impairment (FI) in activities of daily living (ADL) is a critical criterion for diagnosing dementia that could be categorized into its three dimensions: basic (BADL), instrumental (IADL) and advanced activities (aADL). While FI has been well studied in Alzheimer's disease (AD), this characterization has been underexplored in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and even more in Latin American countries, where genetic and exposome diversity defines variability in its clinical presentation.

METHOD: We evaluated 547 individuals from RedLat consortium for dementia research in Latin America (262 controls, 236 AD and 49 FTD) from 5 Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico). We performed descriptive statistics for sociodemographic variables. Functional performance was evaluated through the Tecnology-Activities of Daily Living (T-ADLQ) global score and subscores for BADL, IADL, and aADL. Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn post-hoc tests were performed to compare T-ADLQ scores between the three groups.

RESULT: AD participants showed poor global cognitive performance compared to FTD, and FTD presented higher scores in NPI than AD. In total, basic, instrumental, and advanced T-ADLQ scores, FTD showed higher scores than AD participants, which means poor functional performance in FTD participants; however, these differences only showed significance in the basic domain.

CONCLUSION: In Latin American individuals, FTD showed poorer functional performance than AD patients, statistically significant in the basic domain. Further research would be oriented toward exploring the relationship between this functional performance and cognitive and clinical symptoms to determine the functional profile in FTD, compared with AD.

PMID:41444156 | DOI:10.1002/alz70857_098024