Dementia can be caused by different diseases including Alzheimer's disease (AD), dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), or both (AD + DLB). University of Kentucky AD Center pathologically-diagnosed AD and AD + DLB cases were evaluated who had three or more longitudinal antemortem mental status examinations (
). Patients with important concomitant pathology (
) or patients that were profoundly demented at recruitment (intake
;
) were excluded to strengthen our ability to test the association of specific clinical and pathological indices. Patients with pathologically-diagnosed AD + DLB (
) lost cognitive capacity faster than patients with AD alone (
). In both diseases, treatment with acetylcholinesterase inhibitors was associated with a slower rate of cognitive decline.
