PPA Awareness Day Date in the current year: April 10, 2026

Aphasia is a condition that impairs a person’s ability to produce and/or comprehend language. It is caused by dysfunction in areas of the brain involved in speech processing and production. This dysfunction can result from a stroke, head trauma, brain tumors, autoimmune disorders, brain infections, neurodegenerative diseases, or epilepsy.

People with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) experience a gradual deterioration of their language abilities due to the ongoing degeneration of the brain regions responsible for speech and communication. This type of aphasia is called “primary” because it is caused by internal brain tissue changes rather than an external cause, such as head trauma, and “progressive” because the impairment worsens as the underlying brain disease advances. PPA is often associated with neurodegenerative conditions, such as frontotemporal dementia.

There are three main clinical variants of PPA: progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA), semantic dementia (SD), and logopenic aphasia (LPA). PNFA, also known as agrammatic PPA, is characterized by slow, halting speech and difficulty forming grammatically correct sentences. Semantic PPA involves loss of word meaning. Individuals with this variant may speak fluently, but they use vague or incorrect words, such as “thingy”, and have difficulty understanding the meaning of words they once knew. The logopenic variant is characterized by difficulty finding the right word, which causes long pauses in conversation.

Unlike aphasia caused by traumatic brain injury or stroke, which may improve gradually or spontaneously, PPA is incurable and inevitably worsens over time. Patients slowly lose the ability to speak and comprehend both written and spoken language. The primary approach to managing PPA is to use speech and language therapy to slow the deterioration of speech function in the early stages of the disease and to provide patients with alternative communication methods to compensate for language loss. Many patients also benefit from psychiatric care to manage depression or anxiety related to communication difficulties.

The inaugural PPA Awareness Day was held on April 4, 2024. It was initiated by individuals affected by PPA, along with speech and language therapists Rosemary Townsend and Dr. Ann Volkmer. The day’s main goal is to raise awareness of PPA and how individuals with PPA can benefit from speech and language therapy. It also aims to provide family members of individuals with PPA with a better understanding of the disease, as well as the tools and resources necessary to support and communicate with their loved ones.

PPA Awareness Day should not be confused with PPA2 Awareness Day, which is observed on May 2. The latter raises awareness of inorganic pyrophosphatase 2 (PPA2) deficiency, a rare genetic disorder that often causes sudden cardiac death.