Lewy Body Disease, though commonly prevalent, has not been given due recognition by clinicians. Clinicians often tend to under-diagnose Lewy Body Disease by confusing it with more familiar presentations of Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease. The absolute diagnosis of DLB is possible only on microscopic examination of brain tissue at autopsy. There is no specific biological test or marke...

1 OVERVIEW The term Lewy body dementias (LBD) represents two clinical entities – dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Parkinson’s disease dementia (PDD). While the temporal sequence of symptoms is different in DLB and PDD, individuals with Lewy body dementias have a progressive dementia plus any combination of the following symptoms: hallucinations, Parkinsonism, fluctuating cognitive abilities,...

Visual hallucinations are a feature of many psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as well as proto-typical conditions such as Charles Bonnet syndrome. However, their prevalence is particularly high in Lewy body diseases including Parkinson's disease, Parkinson's disease with dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies; and in the latter up to 80% of individuals are affe...

Several components of Lewy bodies have been identified, but the precise mechanism responsible for the formation of Lewy bodies remains undetermined. The 14-3-3 protein family is involved in numerous signal transduction pathways and interacts with alpha-synuclein, which is a major constituent of Lewy bodies. To elucidate the role of 14-3-3 proteins in neuro-degenerative disorders associated with...