Magnetic resonance spectroscopy in the diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies.

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is considered to be the second most frequent primary degenerative dementing illness after Alzheimer's disease (AD). DLB, together with Parkinson's disease (PD), Parkinson's disease with dementia (PDD) belong to α-synucleinopathies--a group of neurodegenerative diseases associated with pathological accumulation of the α-synuclein protein. Dementia due to PD and DLB shares clinical symptoms and neuropsychological profiles. Moreover, the core features and additional clinical signs and symptoms for these two very similar diseases are largely the same. Neuroimaging seems to be a promising method in differential diagnosis of dementia studies. The development of imaging methods or other objective measures to supplement clinical criteria for DLB is needed and a method which would accurately facilitate diagnosis of DLB prior to death is still being searched. Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy ((1)H-MRS) provides a noninvasive method of assessing an in vivo biochemistry of brain tissue. This review summarizes the main results obtained from the application of neuroimaging techniques in DLB cases focusing on (1)H-MRS.