Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry articles from October 2003

Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry archives from October 2003

Genetics of temporal lobe epilepsy: our traditional understanding is that TLE is an acquired condition, but only now are we beginning to understand the extent of genetic involvement.(Editorial)(Editorial)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1359-1361 In the second half of the 19th century, John Hughlings Jackson proposed the concept of partial epilepsy, including "uncinate seizures", based on clinicopathological observations from patients...

Enteroviruses in chronic fatigue syndrome: "now you see them, now you don't"; can enteroviruses infect human muscle and cause persistent infection that affects only the metabolic machinery of the cells without muscle destruction.(Editorial Commentaries)(Editorial)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1361-1362 In the paper by Lane et al (see pp 1382-1386) (1) an association was found between abnormal exercise lactate response and enterovirus sequences in the muscle of some patients with chronic...

Multicentre European study of thalamic stimulation in essential tremor: bilateral thalamic deep brain stimulation continues to show well maintained benefit in patients who have severe essential tremor after seven years with little increase in stimulation parameters.(Editorial Commentaries)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1362-1363 In their paper, Sydow et al (see this issue pp 1387-1391) (1) have shown sustained long term efficacy of high frequency deep brain stimulation of the thalamus (Vim) for the management of...

Molecular pathogenesis of neuroinflammation.(Neuroscience for Neurologists)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1364-1370 The past few years have seen significant progress towards understanding the mechanisms of immune surveillance and inflammation in the nervous system. In this review, the milestones of...

Neuroimaging tools to rate regional atrophy, subcortical cerebrovascular disease, and regional cerebral blood flow and metabolism: consensus paper of the EADC.(Review)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1371-1381 Neuroimaging is a mainstay in the differential diagnosis of patients with cognitive impairment. The often equivocal clinical pictures, the prognostic uncertainty of the earliest stages of mild...

Clinical neurophysiology on the internet: www.neurophys.com.(Neuronline)
October 1, 2003... Straightforwardly, this website, www.neurophys.com pitches itself as "clinical neurophysiology on the internet". It does indeed cover the spectrum of neurophysiology from basic science to neurophysiology on through to clinical practice;...

Enterovirus related metabolic myopathy: a postviral fatigue syndrome.(Paper)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1382-1386 Objective: To detect and characterise enterovirus RNA in skeletal muscle from patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and to compare efficiency of muscle energy metabolism in enterovirus...

Textbook of clinical neuropsychiatry.(Commended in the BMA Medical Book Awards 2002)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2003... David P. Moore Associate Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Kentucky, USA [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Textbook of Clinical Neuropsychiatry is an indispensable encyclopaedia of...

Multicentre European study of thalamic stimulation in essential tremor: a six year follow up.(Paper)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1387-1391 Background: Thalamic stimulation is an efficient treatment for disabling essential tremor, as previously shown, but follow up has mostly been short term. Objectives: To see whether good...

Chronic deep brain stimulation for the treatment of tremor in multiple sclerosis: review and case reports.(Paper)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1392-1397 Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) offers a non-ablative alternative to thalamotomy for the surgical treatment of medically refractory tremor in multiple sclerosis. However, relatively...

A study of stereotypic behaviours in Alzheimer's disease and frontal and temporal variant frontotemporal dementia.(Paper)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1398-1402 Objective: To document the prevalence and pattern of stereotypic behaviour in patients with Alzheimer's dementia and frontal and temporal variants of frontotemporal dementia. Secondly, to...

Vestibulo-ocular arreflexia in families with spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (Machado-Joseph disease).(Paper)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1403-1406 Objective: To identify the presence of vestibulo-ocular arreflexia in patients with Machado-Joseph disease (MJD), which can easily be diagnosed at the bedside. Methods: Seven patients...

Age and duration related changes in muscle sympathetic nerve activity in Parkinson's disease.(Paper)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1407-1411 Objective: To clarify the characteristics of sympathetic vasomotor function in Parkinson's disease by sympathetic neurographic analysis. Methods: Muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA)...

Early cognitive decline in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease associated with human growth hormone treatment.(Paper)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1412-1416 Background: Most cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in recipients of human cadaveric growth hormone present with a cerebellar syndrome. Dementia is thought to occur late and as a minor...

Incidence of endemic ataxic polyneuropathy and its relation to exposure to cyanide in a Nigerian community.(Paper)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1417-1422 Background: The occurrence of ataxic polyneuropathy in an endemic area in south west Nigeria has been attributed to exposure to cyanide from cassava foods. However, it has been shown that the...

"Bottom-up" and "top-down" effects on reading saccades: a case study.(Paper)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1423-1428 Objective: To investigate the role right foveal/parafoveal sparing plays in reading single words, word arrays, and eye movement patterns in a single case with an incongruous hemianopia. ...

Placing nasogastric tubes in stroke patients with dysphagia: efficiency and tolerability of the reflex placement.(Short Report)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1429-1431 Temporary dysphagia affects up to 50% of stroke patients in the acute stage of their illness and often necessitates tube feeding. In these patients, the placing of nasogastric tubes is often...

Intracranial aneurysm: seen and unseen.(Neurological Picture)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... A 46 year old female with left sided frontal headache and a partial left third nerve palsy underwent magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) followed by digital subtraction angiography (DSA). MRA identified a left posterior communicating artery...

Brain lesions in the course of generalised tetanus.(Short Report)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1432-1434 A 47 year old woman developed left hemiparesis primarily affecting the lower limbs during the course of severe generalised tetanus. MRI on the 82nd hospital day revealed cortical and...

Olfactory dysfunction in degenerative ataxias.(Short Report)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1435-1437 Several lines of evidence suggest that the cerebellum may play a role in higher-order olfactory processing. In this study, we administered the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification...

Spinal dural arteriovenous fistulas: clinical features in 80 patients.(Short Report)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1438-1440 The aim of this study was to describe the clinical spectrum of spinal dural arteriovenous fistulas (SDAF) in a large group of patients. We studied the records of 80 patients who were diagnosed...

Apolipoprotein E genotypes and outcome from out of hospital cardiac arrest.(Short Report)
October 1, 2003... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1441-1443 Genetic factors may influence outcome from cardiac arrest. In Seattle, WA, paramedics collected blood specimens from patients who had suffered cardiac arrest outside of a medical institution...

Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt.(Historical Note)
October 1, 2003... Thomas Clifford Allbutt, (b. 20 July 1836; d. 22 February 1925) is of interest to neurologists as the main instigator, along with Gowers, of the routine clinical use of the ophthalmoscope. He was born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, the only son of...

Task specific focal dystonia: a presentation of spinocerebellar ataxia type 6.( )
October 1, 2003... Autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxias (ADCA) are characterised by clinical and genetic heterogeneity with a substantial overlap of clinical features and a variable degree of adherence to three distinct phenotypes according to Harding's clinical...

Bilateral cerebellar ataxia as the sole manifestation of a unilateral rostral pontine tegmental infarct.
October 1, 2003... It has been reported that a small infarct of the pons can lead to various clinical syndromes such as pure motor hemiparesis, sensorimotor stroke, ataxic hemiparesis, dysarthria-clumsy hand syndrome, or ataxic tetraparesis. (1) However,...

Identification of amoebae in the CSF in a patient with meningoencephalitis.(cerebrospinal fluid)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2003... Amoebae are amphizoic, ubiquitous, and opportunistic protozoa that can affect different organs including skin, lungs, eyes, and the brain. (1 2) In the central nervous system (CNS), two main, well defined disease entities have been described:...

The harsh realities facing the use of SPECT imaging in monitoring disease progression in Parkinson's disease.(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2003... Dr Snow is right to be cautious in his optimism concerning the use of functional imaging markers in neuroprotection studies in Parkinson's disease (1) as storm clouds gather (2 3) over the methods and interpretation of CALM-PD and REAL-PET. The...

Corrections.(Correction Notice)
October 1, 2003... There were two mistakes published in the table of the short report, Sjogren's fsyndrome associated painful sensory neuropathy without sensory ataxia, by K Mori, M Iijima, M Surgiura et al in the September issue of JNNP (2003;74:1320-2): the...