Bilingualism in Primary Progressive Aphasia: A Retrospective Study on Clinical and Language Characteristics.
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ABSTRACT: Background
Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive deterioration of language. Being rare, reports of PPA in multilingual individuals are scarce, despite more than half of the world population being multilingual.Methods
We describe clinical characteristics of 33 bilingual patients with PPA, including symptom presentation and language deficits pattern in their first (L1) and second language (L2), through a systematic literature review and new cases retrospectively identified in 5 countries.Results
In total, 14 patients presented with nonfluent/agrammatic variant, 6 with semantic variant, and 13 with logopenic variant, with a median symptom onset of 2 years. Word-finding difficulties was the first symptom in 65% of all cases, initially noticed in L2, and not always the dominant language. Our group had 22 different languages as L1, and 9 as L2. At the whole-group level there was a tendency for parallel impairment in both languages, in line with the shared bilingual neural substrate hypothesis, but each PPA variant showed some heterogeneity.Discussion
Each PPA variant showed heterogeneity, showing the need for comprehensive language and cognitive assessment across languages, as well as further clarification on the role of language mediators.
SUBMITTER: Costa AS
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6469495 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan-Mar
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Bilingualism in Primary Progressive Aphasia: A Retrospective Study on Clinical and Language Characteristics.
Costa Ana S AS Jokel Regina R Villarejo Alberto A Llamas-Velasco Sara S Domoto-Reilley Kimiko K Wojtala Jennifer J Reetz Kathrin K Machado Álvaro Á
Alzheimer disease and associated disorders 20190101 1
<h4>Background</h4>Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive deterioration of language. Being rare, reports of PPA in multilingual individuals are scarce, despite more than half of the world population being multilingual.<h4>Methods</h4>We describe clinical characteristics of 33 bilingual patients with PPA, including symptom presentation and language deficits pattern in their first (L1) and second language (L2), through a systematic literature ...[more]
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