Background: Neuropsychiatric symptoms of subcortical vascular dementia (SVaD) are mainly associated with damage to frontal-subcortical circuits and may be similar to symptoms of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). The aim of this study was to determine whether the neuropsychiatric manifestations of the Pittsburgh compound B (PiB)-negative SVaD and bvFTD groups differ.
Methods: We compared the Caregiver-Administered Neuropsychiatry Inventory (CGA-NPI) between 48 patients with PiB(-) SVaD and 31 patients with bvFTD. A stepwise logistic regression was applied to determine the best model to predict SVaD.
Results: The SVaD group showed a higher frequency of depression, whereas the bvFTD group had a higher frequency of elation, aberrant motor behavior and appetite/eating disorders. Regarding NPI subscores, the bvFTD group had greater severity of elation, apathy, disinhibition, aberrant motor behavior and appetite/eating disorders, whereas SVaD did not have significantly higher subscores in any domains. The most predictive models that tend to find suggestions of SVaD, as opposed to bvFTD, are as follows: (1) the presence of depression and the absence of appetite/eating disorders, (2) higher NPI subscores of depression and lower NPI subscores of irritability and aberrant motor behavior.
Conclusion: Apart from apathy, SVaD differed from bvFTD in that negative symptoms were more common in SVaD than bvFTD, whereas positive symptoms were predominant in bvFTD compared to SVaD.
Keywords: Apathy; Frontotemporal dementia; Neuropsychiatric symptoms; Subcortical vascular dementia.
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