Metals in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease: Relevance to Dementia with Lewy Bodies.

Despite being a common form of dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies is relatively under-researched when compared with Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. This has arisen from the fact that dementia with Lewy bodies has been historically difficult to diagnose resulting in a lack of well-defined clinical cohorts and post-mortem tissue available for scientific research. Dementia with Lewy bodies shares clinical and pathological features with both Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease so it is therefore likely that it also has similar pathogenic mechanisms leading to disease. This review will discuss the role of biological metals in Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease and whether there are indications that metals may also be involved in dementia with Lewy bodies.