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Overview of the Dementias

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Genetic Counseling for Adult Neurogenetic Disease
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Abstract

The dementias are a group of usually progressive conditions causing impairment in any cognitive domain and in activities of daily living. The most common causes of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease. Dementia may have associated motor symptoms that can develop before or after the cognitive dysfunction. This section reviews many of the genetic counseling issues, including complexity of family history with both sporadic and inherited forms of dementia, the clinical overlap between dementias, distinction between autosomal dominant and risk genes, determining the capacity to consent to genetic testing, and the impact of predictive testing for a fatal, untreatable disease.

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Correspondence to Jill S. Goldman .

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© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Goldman, J.S. (2015). Overview of the Dementias. In: Goldman, J. (eds) Genetic Counseling for Adult Neurogenetic Disease. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7482-2_6

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