Speech and hearing tests enable early detection of rare dementia

A new study shows that specific speech and hearing tests can identify primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a rare type of dementia affecting language, at earlier stages when treatment would be most effective.

The research, published in the journal PLOS ONE, involved comparing the performance of people diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and healthy individuals on language assessment tasks.

PPA initially presents with subtle language difficulties that worsen over time. Early signs include trouble finding words or substituting them with semantically similar terms (such as “knife” and “cutter”) or phonologically similar ones (such as “knife” and “wife”). PPA patients may also develop sentence formation problems, writing errors (dysgraphia), and reading difficulties (dyslexia).

“The possibility of early and more accurate diagnosis is great news because the earlier treatment is started, the slower the progression of the disease tends to be,” said Karin Zazo Ortiz, professor at the Federal University of São Paulo and corresponding author of the article. “The earlier the rehabilitation, the greater the chance that the patient will be able to maintain their communication, speaking, reading and writing skills for longer.”

The researchers used the Montreal-Toulouse Language Assessment Battery (MTL-BR), identifying which of its 22 tasks were most effective in detecting the condition. The study included 87 participants — 29 PPA patients and 58 healthy individuals matched for age and education level.

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