Like dark humour? You can be on the road to dementia

A sudden change in humour could be a red flag for the neurodegenerative disease dementia.

Dr Camilla Clark and her colleagues recruited friends or relatives of 48 people with different forms of frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease and were asked to rate their loved one's preference for different kinds of comedy and how it had changed over 15 years.

This included slapstick comedy like Mr Bean and also inappropriate humour. They found that many patients had developed a liking for a dark sense of humour, like laughing at tragic events and taking delight in other people's misfortunes.

Dementia patients also tended to prefer slapstick to satirical humour, when compared with healthy people of a similar age.

Dr Clark said, 'These were marked changes - completely inappropriate humour well beyond the realms of even distasteful humour. 

'For example, one man laughed when his wife badly scalded herself.'

They also revealed that the families of patients had noticed that their loved ones had developed the darker sense of humour years before the disease had been diagnosed.

"While memory loss is often the first thing that springs to mind when we hear the word dementia, this study highlights the importance of looking at the myriad different symptoms that impact on daily life and relationships," said Dr Simon Ridley, from Alzheimer's Research UK, which partly funded the study

The study is published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.