ABSTRACT
Lewy bodies (LBs) are abnormal, spherical intracytoplasmic protein deposits that can appear in both subcortical and cortical neurons. First identified in 1912 by the German neurologist Frederic H. Lewy, these neuronal inclusion bodies were not formally associated with a form of dementia until several seminal case reports appeared in the early 1980s (Kosaka et al., 1984). The clinical picture that has emerged over time often resembles that of both Alzheimer's disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD), but there are distinct symptoms that researchers and clinicians have organized into a coherent diagnostic entity known as dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). Several pathologic studies have found Lewy bodies in the brains of 15%–25% of individuals with dementia, suggesting that DLB may be more common than VaD (Weisman & McKeith, 2007; Zaccai, McCracken, & Brayne, 2005). In one systematic review, however, DLB was found in 4.2% of dementia cases in the community and 7.5% of cases in secondary care settings (Vann Jones & O’Brien, 2013). Although LBs are common findings in aged brains, their presence does not guarantee DLB since 30%–55% of individuals with Lewy body pathology do not show neuropsychiatric symptoms (Jellinger, 2009).
