A case of primary progressive aphasia. A 14-year follow-up study with neuropathological findings

M Schwarz
1998 Brain  
Primary progressive aphasia has been clinically defined as a progressive language deficit leading to the dissolution of almost all language functions with relative preservation of other cognitive functions until late in the course of the disease. Two types of language impairment have been described for primary progressive aphasia, which differ with respect to the degree of fluency of spontaneous speech. Whereas some authors have emphasized nonfluency as a defining characteristic of primary
more » ... essive aphasia, others have proposed that phonemic rather than semantic paraphasias in naming, both in the fluent and the non-fluent subtype, should be used as a criterion to distinguish primary progressive aphasia from slowly progressive aphasia in other forms of degenerative brain disease. Patients with fluent speech and semantic dementia, as typically seen in Alzheimer's disease, produce semantic Keywords: fluent aphasia; primary progressive aphasia; spongiform encephalopathy Abbreviations: GFAP ϭ glial fibrillary acidic protein; H&E ϭ haematoxylin and eosin
doi:10.1093/brain/121.1.115 pmid:9549492 fatcat:jbgf6cf36zaw3afvbgmvnj3hdy