Anosmia in dementia is associated with Lewy bodies rather than Alzheimer's pathology

In the paper by McShane et al (this issue, pp739–743), the olfactory function of 92 patients with dementia and 94 control subjects, accessed through the Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing (OPTIMA), was assessed and related to neuropathological findings at necropsy.1 Patients with Lewy body dementia were more likely to be anosmic than those patients with Alzheimer's disease, whose olfactory function was comparable with that in control subjects. The extent of the anosmia in Lewy body dementia was greater in those patients with higher counts of Lewy bodies, as detected by antiubiquitin immunohistochemistry, and was not influenced by the presence or …