Pick's Disease, Frontotemporal Dementia, and Pick Complex

Pick's disease has been relabeled recently as frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and the eponymic term restricted to the autopsy finding of typical inclusion bodies. Frontotemporal dementia is being used as a technical term in journals, while relatives of patients, the lay public, and many practitioners find Pick's disease (PiD), similar to Alzheimer's disease (AD), more acceptable. Furthermore, FTD commonly denotes the behavioral disorder, hindering the aphasic and extrapyramidal manifestations from being recognized as part of the syndrome. Recent advances in histochemistry suggest further fractionation, but the discovery ol chromosome 17 localization of the familial forms of the disease suggests the cohesiveness of the clinical and biological entity.