(CNN) -- Life was good for Kenny Sparks. A handsome man with a big smile, he was well-known in his town of Little Compton, Rhode Island. He had a loving wife, two beautiful, college-age children and was the co-owner of a multimillion-dollar contracting business. At 49 he had it all. But then he began to change. At first the family thought Kenny had Alzheimer's disease; he had all the signs. But they got a diagnosis that turned out to be more devastating. Kenny has a condition known as frontotemporal dementia, or FTD. When doctors told Kenny's wife, Cheryl, she was relieved. "I was thankful it wasn't Alzheimer's," she said. "Clearly, what did I know?"
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Frontotemporal dementia affects part of brain responsible for personality, memory, reasoning
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250,000 people in the United States have it, representing 10-20 percent of dementia cases
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The condition is often misdiagnosed, resulting in wrong medications
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Hope on the horizon as researchers target the proteins that accumulate in the brain cells
"Many patients take on symptoms of a stroke and, of course, @placeholder's or even severe depression and are misdiagnosed, which can be dangerous because many of the medications used for these conditions can make FTD worse," said Grossman.
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