SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – There is currently no cure or even any treatment for the type of early-onset dementia that Bruce Willis and Wendy Williams have been diagnosed with.
But as Dr. Adam Staffaroni, a neuropsychologist at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, tells KCBS Radio's Bret Burkhart on this week's "As Prescribed," researchers at UCSF have come up with an easy way to study its effects.
A new smartphone app for clinical trials is helping doctors at UCSF monitor people diagnosed with frontal temporal dementia, or FTD, at home.
FTD is the most common type of dementia affecting those under 65. It typically causes extreme personality shifts, anti-social behavior and overeating, and can also cause loss of language or movement disorders.
"It's a progressive brain disease we call a neurodegenerative disease, and it's similar to Alzheimer's disease in that regard," said Dr. Staffaroni. "Unlike Alzheimer's disease, which primarily affects the memory systems of the brain, FTD causes early changes in behavior and personality, things like disinhibition and loss of empathy. It can cause changes in language, being able to speak and understand words, causes movement changes, as well as changes in aspects of cognition."
Because most people diagnosed with FTD are often still working, getting patients to enroll in clinical trials that help doctors understand the disease, which could involve many trips to medical facilities, is often very difficult. That's where the app comes in.
Dr. Staffaroni helped to develop the app, which can regularly test patients' memory and speaking skills and even how they're moving and walking, simply by using their smartphone.
"When they open it up, they see a variety of different types of tasks. So some of them are questionnaires, asking them about how they've been feeling or how they've been thinking. We have them take gamified versions of some of our classic cognitive tests that we do in clinics," he said. "We also have them do some speaking tasks. So they'll talk and we'll record their samples. And we also use the phone to look at their movement by having them put it in their pocket and do walking tests and balance tests."
The app allows more people to be involved in trials without actually having to travel to a clinic, Staffaroni said, which is expected to increase participation rates and hopefully advance research. While the app is still in the beginning stages, researchers are hopeful that it will help identify people who are in the earliest stages of the disease, who might benefit the most from treatments.
"I think there's a lot of enthusiasm and optimism about the increasing knowledge of this disease over the past decade and the number of treatments targeting it has continued to advance as well. So I think we're optimistic and enthusiastic about what the next five to 10 years holds, but currently there are no available treatments," said Dr. Staffaroni.
Listen to this week's "As Prescribed" to learn more. You can also listen to last week's episode to learn about new UCSF studies that could pave the way toward understanding some of the mysteries of COVID and might hold a key to explaining long COVID, here .
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"As Prescribed" is sponsored by UCSF.
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