Patent ID: 8486635

Claim:
A method for assisting in the identification of frontotemporal dementia, wherein said method comprises: (a) performing an amplification reaction using a nucleic acid sample obtained from a human suspected of having dementia to amplify at least a portion of a PGRN nucleic acid sequence of said human to obtain amplified PGRN nucleic acid comprising a mutation as compared to the nucleic acid sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:2, wherein said mutation is (i) a frameshift mutation or (ii) a mutation that results in the premature termination of the coding sequence of a PGRN polypeptide through the introduction of a stop codon, (b) performing a sequencing reaction using said amplified PGRN nucleic acid to detect the presence of said mutation within said amplified PGRN nucleic acid, and (c) classifying said human as having said mutation and frontotemporal dementia.