CNN health | Lewy body dementia: The life-changing disease that devastated Robin Williams

The late Robin Williams (right) and his wife, Susan Schneider Williams, were in a years-long relationship before marrying in 2011. The comedian had a type of dementia that’s difficult to diagnose.

(CNN) – Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are two diseases that many Americans are all too familiar with, but there is another dementia that plagued the late comedian Robin Williams.

It might be “the most common disease you’ve never heard of,” said Dr. James Galvin, a professor of neurology and director of the Lewy Body Dementia Research Center of Excellence at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine.

Williams had Lewy body dementia, which his family learned only after his death. It’s often misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease due to its early similarity to those other neurodegenerative diseases.  —more—