What is frontotemporal degeneration?

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a group of neurologic disorders associated with changes in personality, behavior, language or movement. Some FTD forms are inherited, and some are not. Typically, people develop FTD symptoms before age 60.

While there is no cure for this progressive decline, FTD research has made significant strides in the past two decades, says Dr. Bradley Boeve (boh-VAY), a Mayo Clinic neurologist.

"There are few other neurodegenerative disorders where we have learned so much over a relatively short period of time," says Dr. Boeve, a co-principal investigator of the ALLFTD Study, an international consortium funded by the National Institutes of Health to target FTD.

"We understand the biology of the disease that much better. The optimism for therapeutics is so much greater than even two or three years ago. There's definitely hope."
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