Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Jul 18;11(1):68.
doi: 10.1038/s41514-025-00252-x.

Identifying people with potentially undiagnosed dementia with Lewy bodies using natural language processing

Mohamed Heybe  1 , Lucy Gibson  1   2 , Annabel C Price  3   4 , Rudolf N Cardinal  3   4 , John T O'Brien  3   4 , Robert Stewart  1   2 , Christoph Mueller  5   6
Affiliations

Identifying people with potentially undiagnosed dementia with Lewy bodies using natural language processing

Mohamed Heybe et al. NPJ Aging. .

Abstract

Natural language processing (NLP) can expand the utility of clinical records data in dementia research. We deployed NLP algorithms to detect core features of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and applied those to a large database of patients diagnosed with dementia in Alzheimer's disease (AD) or DLB. Of 14,329 patients identified, 4.3% had a diagnosis of DLB and 95.7% of dementia in AD. All core features were significantly commoner in DLB than in dementia in AD, although 18.7% of patients with dementia in AD had two or more DLB core features. In conclusion, NLP applications can identify core features of DLB in routinely collected data. Nearly one in five patients with dementia in AD have two or more DLB core features and potentially qualify for a diagnosis of probable DLB. NLP may be helpful to identify patients who may fulfil criteria for DLB but have not yet been diagnosed.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: R.S. declares research support received in the last 3 years from GSK. J.O.B. has no conflicts related to this work. Outside this work he has acted as a consultant for TauRx, Novo Nordisk, Biogen, Roche, Lilly, GE Healthcare and Okwin and received grants or academic in kind support from Avid/ Lilly, Merck, UCB and Alliance Medical. R.N.C. consults for Campden Instruments Ltd in the area of research software (unrelated to the present work) and receives royalties from Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Enterprise, and Routledge (unrelated to the present work). M.H., L.G., A.C.P., and C.M. declare no conflict of interest.

References

    1. Casey, J. A., Schwartz, B. S., Stewart, W. F. & Adler, N. E. Using electronic health records for population health research: a review of methods and applications. Annu. Rev. Public Health37, 61–81 (2016). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kane, J. P. M. et al. Clinical prevalence of Lewy body dementia. Alzheimers Res. Ther.10, 19 (2018). - PMC - PubMed
    1. McKeith, I. G. et al. Diagnosis and management of dementia with Lewy bodies: fourth consensus report of the DLB Consortium. Neurology89, 88–100 (2017). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Surendranathan, A. et al. Clinical diagnosis of Lewy body dementia. BJPsych Open6, e61 (2020). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ballard, C., Grace, J., McKeith, I. & Holmes, C. Neuroleptic sensitivity in dementia with Lewy bodies and Alzheimer’s disease. Lancet351, 1032–1033 (1998). - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources