Bruce Willis' Frontotemporal Dementia condition worsens | FOX 5 DC

Bruce Willis's family revealing a sobering health diagnosis for the actor. They have announced Willis is suffering from a form of dementia known as frontotemporal or FTD or for short. There are no treatments for the disease but they hope researchers make more developments. Tonight we are speaking with Dr. Nicholas Stryker, a neurologist at MedStar Health for more perspective on this. Dr. thank you so much for being with us tonight.

Thanks for having me. So let's get into this. You wrote about a blog post about the actor's condition last year. How do you explain his recent diagnosis that was recently revealed by his family? Yeah, I think it's sort of interesting the way that it was presented to us. Back then we were just told he had aphasia and there was some uncertainty within the medical community if they were saying he had something that just happened all of a sudden or something that was more progressive. I think the sense was that it likely was more progressive, that it wasn't something just happened overnight such as a stroke or a seizure and really had been going on for some time and probably would stay that way. And so it sort of fits with what we had suspected with which is that it's a neurodegenerative disease meaning that it's something that sort of gets worse with time and then this diagnosis was somewhat expected given that we knew he had problems with language especially since they used the word aphasia to describe probably the most prominent feature which is just having trouble with language, being able to find words, being able to express yourself.

So it sort of made sense from that perspective. Can we kind of explain for those, kind of get a little bit more deep into frontotemporal dementia? Sure. How is it different from other forms of dementia? How can people pick up signs if this is affecting one of their loved ones? Those are all great questions and I think there's a lot of confusion even in the field because we're just starting to understand the imaging, the genetics, the other biomarkers behind all these diseases where before it was very common for someone just to be told oh you have Alzheimer's just because it's a common type of dementia. Now we have a better sense of the subtypes. So this particular type as is in the name frontotemporal dementia affects the frontal lobe which is involved in things like behavior, executive function like planning and the temporal lobe which is involved in language and memory. So it's a certain pattern both of the way people have symptoms meaning it's coming from difficulties with planning and difficulties with language and remembering as well as difficulties with behavior as well as the imaging findings where we put somebody in an MRI machine, get a look at what their brain scan looks like and we see areas that are smaller in these frontal regions and in these temporal regions. And so that's where that term comes from.

In terms of science look out for I think it's always difficult for people to know what's normal aging because with normal aging people do become a little bit more forgetful. There can be changes that are just normal and things that really what we look for at least in the neurologic field or in medicine of what's really getting people into trouble. Things like leaving the stove on, things that are just really out of character for the person. So those are kind of the warning signs that we try to let people know about. Things that are just really unusual for the person or just not their normal behavior. So Bruce Willis he's young, he's only 67 years old, hopefully he has many more years to live. What can people do to kind of ease the obviously uncomfortable nature of dementia, difficulties speaking, finding the words.

Are there things that people can do to help their loved ones if they do get this kind of diagnosis? Sure. How about 35 seconds left here? Okay. So you know I think there's always a sort of genetic component and we just can't avoid that but the typical things that we know help exercise, diet, all of those healthy living things probably prevent the risk of other things that can worsen memory problems such as vascular disease. So the more we do those things probably the better for our health and to prevent dementia. Yeah, I know that Bruce Willis's families were saying that you know somewhat of a relief that they have a diagnosis and they're hoping that now that you know he's a celebrity we can bring awareness to this, there could be more research. So again Dr. Nicholas Stryker we thank you for bringing attention to this and for helping us dissect what exactly this is and maybe can help some families.

Thank you for being with us.

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