Patterns of Decline in Naming and Semantic Knowledge in Primary Progressive Aphasia.
Rajani Sebastian, Carol B Thompson, Nae-Yuh Wang and 5 others
PMID 30613121WHAT IT FOUND
People with nonfluent/agrammatic PPA lost naming fastest overall, but those starting with high scores declined slower.
Speech-language rehabilitation was associated with slower action-naming and semantic decline, not proof it works.
Key findings
01Decline was fastest in nonfluent/agrammatic PPA: 0.91 points per month on the 30-point object-naming test, 0.76 points per month on the 35-point action-naming test, and 0.35 points per month on the 14-point semantic-matching test.
02Compared with nonfluent/agrammatic PPA, semantic variant decline was slower by 0.35 points per month on object naming, 0.23 points per month on action naming, and 0.05 points per month on semantic matching.
03Participants who had received speech-language rehabilitation showed slower decline on action naming and semantic matching, but the study did not record therapy duration or content.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Not all participants were assessed at every time point, and some dropped out or could not complete tasks. The study did not record the duration or nature of speech-language rehabilitation, so therapy was not a controlled treatment. Participants first presented to clinic at variable times after symptom onset, so baseline scores did not all represent the same disease stage. The study measured only object naming, action naming, and semantic matching, not all language abilities or functional communication. The analysis did not include imaging data to link language decline to brain change.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that speech-language rehabilitation slows decline. The study did not randomise therapy and did not record its duration or content, so it cannot show that therapy caused slower decline.