Terrible news for the biggest fans of Bruce Willis. The illness of the American actor, who ended his career in the spring of 2022 due to health problems, has worsened and the actor now suffers from an incurable form of dementia, according to a new medical diagnosis, has announced his family, this Thursday, February 17.
FTD is related to Alzheimer’s disease
The 67-year-old actor initially suffered from aphasia, a language disorder caused by brain damage. But since last year, “Bruce’s disease has progressed and we now have a more precise diagnosis: frontotemporal dementia”, explained his relatives in a press release. Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) is a degenerative brain disease that affects the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. This disease affects approximately 6,000 people in France and nearly 250,000 in the United States. FTD is related to Alzheimer’s disease. “Bruce Willis suffers from frontotemporal dementia, but in reality, we are talking about frontotemporal lobar degeneration”, reports Capucine Lecocq, neuropsychologist at the Orleans hospital.
“Like a growing number of other associations, we prefer to use the term degeneration, considering that the meaning of dementia in everyday language has a pejorative connotation that is detrimental to patients”, reports the Association France- DFT. According to them, discussions are underway in different countries to try to change the medical language in this direction.
DLFT does not attack memory first
The different regions of the brain have very specific specializations. The organization of the brain helps explain the complex clinical manifestations and diseases of the brain. Thus, memory greatly depends on a small part of the internal temporal lobe, the hippocampus. Our faculties of judgment, empathy, decision-making depend on the frontal lobe. Capucine Lecocq makes the difference between Alzheimer’s disease and fronto-temporal lobar degeneration.
“Alzheimer’s disease, it will affect your memory first. First, you will forget recent events, recent discussions, what you did three days ago. Then little by little, it nibbles away more memories. old and you end up losing your identity a bit. Because you forget all the events that have marked you in your life”, reports the neuropsychologist.
“Fronto-temporal lobar degeneration, it’s not going to attack the memory areas at the beginning. It’s going to attack the frontal lob first and the frontal lob is what manages our capacity at the social level, it’s that is, our ability to adapt to others and social rules.Often, people with frontotemporal lobar dementia may exhibit maladaptive behaviors, such as making saucy jokes, making inappropriate remarks, consuming a lot of alcohol or eating greedily. There can be several behaviors that are quite maladaptive,” says the neuropsychologist.
“Logic and reasoning problems”
And to continue on the other manifestations of this disorder. “It can be disinhibition, so inappropriate or backward social behavior, a patient who is going to be inhibited who no longer speaks, completely apathetic, completely out of touch with his social environment. So their behavior can change. And in addition From that, they will not necessarily have memory problems, but they will have problems with logic and reasoning. That is to say, in the most complex or new situations, they can no longer manage to adapt and put in place strategies to do what they had planned to do. Everything becomes complicated and then little by little, the memory ends up being affected. But beware, some forms of DLFT can affect in the foreground the capacities of language making the person unable to express themselves”, concludes Capucine Lecocq.
Having a loved one who suffers from FTLD can be complicated for families, patients can become very aggressive over time. Today, there is no curative treatment for frontotemporal lobar degeneration, nor even a treatment capable of slowing the progression of the disease. According to the France-DFT association, doctors can, on the other hand, prescribe treatments such as antidepressants or mood stabilizers in order to improve the behavioral symptoms of certain types of DLFT and improve the patient’s life.
The most common cause of death appears to be pneumonia
Patients with advanced disease usually die of complications such as pneumonia, infections, injuries from a fall. Pneumonia is probably the most common cause of death. The different forms of DLFT have many things in common. They evolve gradually and occur in relatively young people. The onset of symptoms usually occurs between the ages of 50 and 60, although cases affecting younger (around 20) or older (over 70) patients are possible. The disease affects both men and women and can be hereditary in rare cases.