Frontotemporal Lobar degeneration including Frontotemporal Dementia
Background
Frontotemporal Lobar degeneration; FTLD; Pick's disease
Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration (FTLD) is a term for a group of conditions caused by loss of brain cells in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. Pick's disease is an older name for the disease and is now mostly used just to mean a particular type of underlying pathology, although some people still use this to mean the clinical syndrome of FTLD.
Anybody can develop FTLD. It affects men and women alike. Although it typically affects people in their fifties and sixties it has been diagnosed in people from the ages of twenty to eighty. The rate of progression varies enormously ranging from a duration of less than two years to well over ten years.