JAMA neurology
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Measuring disease progression in early Parkinson disease: the National Institutes of Health Exploratory Trials in Parkinson Disease (NET-PD) experience.
Optimizing assessments of rate of progression in Parkinson disease (PD) is important in designing clinical trials, especially of potential disease-modifying agents. ⋯ AND RELEVANCE In early PD, the UPDRS Part II score and Part III score and the Schwab and England Independence Scale score can be used to measure disease progression, whereas the 39-item Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire and summary index, Total Functional Capacity scale, and the 12-item Short Form Health Survey Physical Summary and Mental Summary are not sensitive to change.
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Comparative Study
Comparison of Parkinson risk in Ashkenazi Jewish patients with Gaucher disease and GBA heterozygotes.
Information on age-specific risk for Parkinson disease (PD) in patients with Gaucher disease (GD) and glucocerebrosidase (GBA) heterozygotes is important for understanding the pathophysiology of the genetic association and for counseling these populations. ⋯ Patients with GD and GBA heterozygotes have an increased age-specific risk for PD compared with control individuals, with a similar magnitude of PD risk by 80 years of age; however, the number of mutant alleles may play an important role in age at PD onset.
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Lack of objective biomarkers for brain damage hampers acute diagnosis and clinical decision making about return to play after sports-related concussion. ⋯ Sports-related concussion in professional ice hockey players is associated with acute axonal and astroglial injury. This can be monitored using blood biomarkers, which may be developed into clinical tools to guide sport physicians in the medical counseling of athletes in return-to-play decisions.
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Currently, diagnosis of Parkinson disease is mainly based on clinical criteria characterized by motor symptoms including bradykinesia, rigidity, resting tremor, and postural instability. Reliable in vivo biomarkers to monitor disease severity and reflect the underlying dopaminergic degeneration are important for future disease-modifying therapy in Parkinson disease. ⋯ In PD, 18F-DTBZ PET is a potential imaging biomarker for measuring dopaminergic degeneration in vivo and monitoring the severity of disease.
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Review
IgG4-related hypertrophic pachymeningitis: clinical features, diagnostic criteria, and treatment.
IgG4-related hypertrophic pachymeningitis (IgG4-RHP) is an increasingly recognized manifestation of IgG4-related disease, a fibroinflammatory condition that can affect virtually any organ. It is estimated that IgG4-RHP may account for a high proportion of cases of hypertrophic pachymeningitis once considered idiopathic. ⋯ IgG4-related disease accounts for an increasing proportion of cases of idiopathic hypertrophic pachymeningitis. Clinicians should become familiar with this alternative differential diagnosis because a prompt, specific therapeutic approach may avoid long-term neurological complications.