Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is the second most common form of presenile dementia, after early onset Alzheimer's disease. Up to half of cases of FTD are thought to be familial, probably with an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance, some with mutations on chromosome 17. The genetics of sporadic FTD have been less studied, although several groups have examined the potential association of FTD with apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4, with inconclusive results.1-3

We studied 11 patients with sporadic FTD (excluding patients with first degree relatives with dementia) in the cohort of the Oxford project to investigate memory and aging (OPTIMA). Nine of the 11 were histopathologically confirmed and the remaining two fulfilled the consensus criteria of Neary et al 4 (three of the first nine had also been clinically diagnosed by these criteria and all three were confirmed at necropsy); only one of the nine confirmed cases was Pick-type. Apolipoprotein E genotyping was performed, blind to diagnosis, by polymerase chain reaction methods5 for the 11 patients with FTD …