• Posted May 13, 2026

Ted Turner's Brain Disease More Common Than Previously Thought, Review Finds

The degenerative brain disease that claimed CNN founder Ted Turner’s life is likely more common than other rare but well-known neurological diseases, a new evidence review says.

Lewy body dementia (LBD), has an overall incidence rate of nearly 5 cases for every 100,000 person-years, researchers reported May 11 in JAMA Neurology.

That makes it more common than ALS and some forms of dementia or Parkinson’s disease, researchers said.

LBD “is a predominantly late-onset dementia with higher frequency than several other uncommon neurodegenerative disorders,” concluded the research team led by Dr. Daniele Urso, a neurologist at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro” in Italy.

Turner died last week at age 87 after battling LBD since 2018.

Lewy body dementia is associated with abnormal brain deposits of a protein called alpha-synuclein, according to the National Institutes of Health. Those deposits, called Lewy bodies, affect chemicals in the brain and contribute to problems with thinking, movement, behavior and mood.

While LBD is well-known, no studies have yet tried to assess how common the disease is globally, researchers said.

For the new review, researchers pooled data from 12 prior studies and found that LBD has a rate of about 4.8 cases per 100,000 person-years. Person-years represent the total amount of time everyone included in a study has been observed.

By comparison, frontotemporal dementia has rate of nearly 2.3 cases per 100,000 person-years, ALS a rate of about 1.6 cases, and atypical Parkinson's syndromes between 0.3 to 0.8 cases, researchers said.

“In this study, they found that Lewy body dementia happens more often and is more prevalent than previously thought and appears to be more common than what was believed to be the next neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's, which is frontotemporal dementia,” said Dr. Jeremy Koppel, who reviewed the findings. Koppel is the co-director of the Litwin-Zucker Research Center for the study of Alzheimer's disease at The Northwell Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York.

“This paper is shining a light on the rates of Lewy body dementia and saying it happens more often than people had believed,” Koppel said.

Men tended to have a higher case rate, about 5.5 cases per 100,000 person-years compared to 4.3 for women.

However, clinical diagnoses of LBD by doctors were uncommon, showing that the disease is likely under-recognized and underdiagnosed, researchers said.

“The findings underscore the need for standardized diagnostic approaches, and equitable access to specialized assessment to reduce underdiagnosis and misclassification,” the researchers wrote.

Ted Turner’s death could have a broader impact, according to Koppel.

“I'm hoping that if anything, Ted Turner’s passing will raise awareness, especially amongst clinicians who see patients suffering from mixed cognitive and neuropsychiatric conditions, where making an accurate diagnosis is absolutely critical,” he said.

"What's unique about Lewy body dementia is that these people present with a lot of psychiatric symptoms,” Koppel added. “Frequently, one of the core criteria is visual hallucinations, seeing things that aren't there, in addition to very dramatic shifts in level of consciousness. The patient may look like they are having a psychotic break or psychiatric disorder if they're not showing a very robust cognitive impairment. But eventually, they become very cognitively impaired.”

Patients with LBD also respond differently to some drugs commonly prescribed to people with other forms of dementia, Koppel said.

“Lewy body patients can have a horrible reaction to antipsychotics,” he said. “You have to be really, really careful when giving medicines giving medicines to a Lewy body patient."

More information

The National Institutes of Health has more on Lewy body dementia.

SOURCES: JAMA Neurology, May 11, 2026;  Dr. Jeremy Koppel, co-director, Litwin-Zucker Research Center for the study of Alzheimer's disease at The Northwell Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, New York