Primary progressive aphasia in a bilingual woman

Multilingual aphasias are common because most people in the world know more than one language, but little is known of these syndromes except in patients who have had a stroke. We present a 76-year-old right-handed woman, fluent in English and Chinese, who developed anomia at age 70 and then progressed to aphasia. Functional neuroimaging disclosed mild left temporoparietal hypometabolism. Neurolinguistic testing was performed in both English and Chinese, representing a unique contribution to the literature. Results revealed conduction-like aphasia that was comparable in the two languages, although English was slightly better preserved. Primary progressive aphasia has disrupted 2 languages in a similar manner, suggesting their close neuroanatomic relationship in this case.