title: Investigation of neuropsychological characteristics of very mild and mild dementia with Lewy bodies.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The study aimed to compare the profile of very mild and mild dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) patients with disease duration up to 5 years in order to find markers for faster progression in this early stage.
  
  
  METHODS
  We investigated 45 DLB patients with disease duration up to 5 years and 22 normal controls. DLB patients were divided into two subgroups on the basis of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE): very mild and mild.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Compared to normal controls, very mild DLB patients show significant deficits on tests for attention/executive functions, language, visuospatial/constructional abilities, and retrieval of the episodic memory. In addition, mild DLB (mDLB) patients show a significantly lower score on recall and recognition of the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test (FCSRT), Trail Making Test Part B (TMT-B), Stroop test, verbal fluency, and Clock Drawing Test than did very mild DLB (vmDLB) patients. Patients with mDLB also have more visual hallucinations, but not significant motor differences compared to vmDLB.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In the present work we found that faster progression to the mild DLB stage in the first few years of the disease is mainly related to deterioration of memory, attention/executive functions, and visuospatial abilities, as well as an increased frequency of visual hallucinations.
authors.affiliation: a University Hospital "Alexandrovska ," Department of Neurology , Sofia , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Mariya
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Petrova
authors.affiliation: a University Hospital "Alexandrovska ," Department of Neurology , Sofia , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Radka
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pavlova
authors.affiliation: a University Hospital "Alexandrovska ," Department of Neurology , Sofia , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Yavor
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhelev
authors.affiliation: a University Hospital "Alexandrovska ," Department of Neurology , Sofia , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Shima
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mehrabian
authors.affiliation: a University Hospital "Alexandrovska ," Department of Neurology , Sofia , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Margarita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Raycheva
authors.affiliation: a University Hospital "Alexandrovska ," Department of Neurology , Sofia , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Latchezar
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Traykov
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000209:etiology; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020961:Lewy Body Disease / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis; D008297:Male; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D008609:Mental Status Schedule; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000209:etiology
keywords: Dementia with Lewy bodies; mild dementia; progression; visual hallucinations