Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0014547 (focal epilepsy)
 1,627 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Early global deprivation of institutionalized children may result in persistent specific cognitive and behavioral deficits. In order to examine brain dysfunction underlying these deficits, we have applied positron emission tomography using 2-deoxy-2-[(18)F]fluoro-D-glucose in 10 children (6 males, 4 females, mean age 8.8 years) adopted from Romanian orphanages. Using statistical parametric mapping (SPM), the pattern of brain glucose metabolism in the orphans was compared to the patterns obtained from two control groups: (i) a group of 17 normal adults (9 males, 8 females, mean age 27.6 years) and (ii) a group of 7 children (5 males and 2 females, mean age 10.7 years) with medically refractory focal epilepsy, but normal glucose metabolism pattern in the contralateral hemisphere. Consistent with previous studies of children adopted from Romanian orphanages, neuropsychological assessment of Romanian orphans in the present study showed mild neurocognitive impairment, impulsivity, and attention and social deficits. Comparing the normalized glucose metabolic rates to those of normal adults, the Romanian orphans showed significantly decreased metabolism bilaterally in the orbital frontal gyrus, the infralimbic prefrontal cortex, the medial temporal structures (amygdala and head of hippocampus), the lateral temporal cortex, and the brain stem. These findings were confirmed using a region-of-interest approach. SPM analysis showed significantly decreased glucose metabolism in the same brain regions comparing the orphans to the nonepileptic hemisphere of the childhood epilepsy controls. Dysfunction of these brain regions may result from the stress of early global deprivation and may be involved in the long-term cognitive and behavioral deficits displayed by some Romanian orphans.
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PMID:Local brain functional activity following early deprivation: a study of postinstitutionalized Romanian orphans. 1170 85

Rasmussen's syndrome is a chronic encephalitis characterized by intractable focal epilepsy and progressive neurologic deterioration with lateralized brain destruction. In the early stages of the disease, the diagnosis can be difficult to make, and brain biopsy is often performed. We evaluated the patterns of cerebral glucose metabolism using 2-deoxy-2-[18F]-fluoro-D-glucose positron emission tomography (PET) in 15 children (age range 2.9-15.4 years, mean age 8.7 +/- 4.3 years) with Rasmussen's syndrome. In 6 patients evaluated early (< or = 1 year of onset of seizures), the PET scan showed areas of abnormal metabolism restricted mostly to the frontal and temporal regions, whereas the posterior cortex was preserved. Pathologic changes seen in the resected cortex were more pronounced in cortical areas of abnormal metabolism than in regions showing normal metabolism. In 9 patients evaluated later (>1 year after onset of seizures), the PET scan showed more diffuse hemispheric metabolic abnormalities including the occipital cortex, but the abnormalities remained highly lateralized. These patterns of glucose metabolic abnormalities in the early and late stages of the disease may facilitate the diagnosis of Rasmussen's syndrome and assist guidance of biopsy in early cases, when structural neuroimaging is still normal.
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PMID:Patterns of cerebral glucose metabolism in early and late stages of Rasmussen's syndrome. 1173 64