Research Information System
6th International Conference on Alzheimers Disease and Related Disorders in the Middle East, İstanbul, Turkey, 25 - 27 October 2013, vol.35, no.3, pp.724
Neurosyphilis is a treatable cause of dementia. Recent studies report an Alzheimers disease (AD)-like pattern in patients with neurosyphilis. We retrospectively investigated the clinical and cognitive and radiological features of patients with neurosyphilis in comparison to early onset AD patients.
Neurosyphilitic and early onset AD patients followed in Dementia and Behavioral Neurology outpatient clinic were retrospectively compared in terms of clinical, neuropsychological and radiological features.
There were sixteen patients with neurosyphilis and 44 patients with early onset AD. The mean age of onset and mean follow up duration for cognitive symptoms patients with neurosyphilis were 48 years and 2.12 years respectively. All patients with neurosyphilis were male. Neurosyphilitic patients and early onset AD patients had similar performances in memory, language and executive function tests. Attention was more severely impaired in patients with neurosyphilis whereas visiospatial functions were more severely impaired in AD patients. Neurosyphilitic patients had more psychiatric symptoms compared to AD patients. Both patient groups had medial temporal atrophy which was more severe in early onset AD group.
Our results demonstrate that patients with neurosyphilis show AD-like pattern in terms of clinical feature.