Two cases of food aversion with semantic dementia

ABSTRACT

Accounts of altered eating behavior in semantic dementia generally emphasize gluttony and abnormal food preferences. Here we describe two female patients with no past history of eating disorders who developed early prominent aversion to food in the context of an otherwise typical semantic dementia syndrome. One patient (aged 57) presented features in line with anorexia nervosa while the second patient (aged 58) presented with a syndrome more suggestive of bulimia nervosa. These cases add to the growing spectrum of apparently dichotomous behavior patterns in the frontotemporal dementias and illustrate a potentially under-recognized cause of eating disorders presenting in later life.

KEYWORDS:

• Anorexia
• eating behavior
• semantic dementia
• frontotemporal dementia
• bulimia

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the patients and caregivers for their participation.

Disclosure statement

JDW receives salary support from the Wellcome Trust. CJH, PDF, and JDR have received salary support from the Medical Research Council. Other authors report no disclosures.

Additional information

Funding

The Dementia Research Centre is supported by Alzheimer’s Research, UK, the Brain Research Trust, and the Wolfson Foundation. This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust, the UK Medical Research Council, the NIHR Queen Square Dementia Biomedical Research Unit, and the National Brain Appeal Frontotemporal Dementia Research Fund. CJH holds an MRC PhD studentship. PDF was supported by an MRC Research Training Fellowship. JDR was supported by an NIHR Rare Disease Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship. JDW holds a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellowship [grant number 091673/Z/10/Z].