Cited by 385Dementia and Cognitive Impairment ResearchAlzheimer's disease research and treatmentsHistorical and Modern Theater Studies

Distinguishing Alzheimer’s disease from other major forms of dementia

Open access
Karantzoulis, Stella, Galvin, James E·2011·Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common and most studied cause of dementia. Significant advances have been made since the first set of clinical criteria for AD were put forth in 1984 that are now captured in the new criteria for AD published in 2011. Key features include recognition of a broad AD spectrum (from preclinical to mild cognitive impairment to AD dementia) and requirement of AD biomarkers for diagnosis. Correctly diagnosing dementia type is increasingly important in an era when potential disease-modifying agents are soon to be marketed. The typical AD dementia syndrome has at its core, an amnestic syndrome of the hippocampal type, followed by associated deficits in word-finding, spatial cognition, executive functions and neuropsychiatric changes. Atypical presentations of AD have also been identified that are presumed to have a different disease course. It can be difficult to distinguish between the various dementia syndromes given the overlap in many common clinical features across the dementias. The clinical difficulty in diagnosis may reflect the underlying pathology, as AD often co-occurs with other pathologies at autopsy, such as cerebrovascular disease or Lewy bodies. Neuropsychological evaluation has provided clinicians and researchers with profiles of cognitive strengths and weaknesses that help to define the dementias. There is yet no single behavioral marker that can reliably discriminate AD from the other dementias. The combined investigation of cognitive and neurobehavioral symptoms coupled with imaging markers could provide a more accurate approach for differentiating between AD and other major dementia syndromes in the future.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1586/ern.11.155

Cites

121 of 121 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Clinicians face considerable difficulties identifying and differentiating between similar conditions, especially when symptoms frequently appear across many common diseases.

    “Clinicians face considerable difficulties identifying and differentiating between similar conditions, especially when symptoms frequently appear across many common diseases [124,125].”

    From Toward Safer Diagnoses: A SEIPS-Based Narrative Review of Diagnostic Errors (2026) · cites this paper as [125]

    The section “Distinguishing AD dementia from other major forms of dementia” says that overlapping clinical presentations make diagnosis challenging and that other dementia syndromes can mimic Alzheimer’s disease. The Expert commentary likewise describes substantial overlap between dementia syndromes. The source supports the point for dementias, but not the claim’s broader reference to many common diseases. (LLM, conf=0.82)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • bvFTD patients may have mild difficulty with free recall early, but recognition memory is typically intact and they are able to recognize items with cueing, consistent with a retrieval-predominant deficit.

    “While bvFTD patients may have mild difficulty with free recall early in the disease, recognition memory is typically intact and thus patients are able to recognize items with cueing, consistent with a retrieval-predominant deficit [24].”

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [8]Hodges JR Tulving E Craik FIM Memory in the dementias. Oxford Handbook of Memory 2000 441 459 Oxford University Press Oxford, UK

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Karantzoulis, S., & Galvin, J. E.
Affiliations
NYU Langone Health (US)
Corresponding author
Karantzoulis, Stella
Venue
Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics
Published
2011-11
Volume
11
Issue
11
Pages
1579-1591
ISSN
  • 1473-7175 (ISSN-L)
  • 1744-8360
OpenAlex
W2067203120
Cited by
385
References
118
Citations by year
2026: 24 · 2025: 48 · 2024: 38 · 2023: 32 · 2022: 30 · 2021: 42 · 2020: 38 · 2019: 26 · 2018: 26 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 6
FWCI
6.16
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
National Institute on Aging (AG008051, P30AG008051, R01AG040211)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Alzheimer's disease research and treatments
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Historical and Modern Theater Studies
Keywords
Alzheimer's disease, dementia diagnosis, differential diagnosis of dementia, biomarkers, mild cognitive impairment, amnestic syndrome, atypical Alzheimer's disease, neuropsychological assessment, neuroimaging biomarkers, Lewy bodies, cerebrovascular disease, disease-modifying agents
MeSH terms
Alzheimer Disease, Dementia, Diagnosis, Differential, Humans, Neuropsychological Tests

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review