Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0026838 (spasticity)
 6,471 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

After head injury, motor deficits (paralysis, spasticity, ataxia) dominate together with cognitive and personality disturbances. Optimal positioning and physiotherapy is important in early treatment to prevent complications later, due to spasticity. Memory and learning deficits can be compensated for with alternate cognitive strategies. Restoration of function after severe cognitive deficits takes a minimum of one year. Personality changes are disruptive to the rehabilitation process and to family reintegration. Therefore an intensive support system for the family is needed.
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PMID:[Rehabilitation of polytraumatized brain-injured patients]. 267 61

Delayed neurological deterioration following anoxia is known to result from carbon monoxide exposure. However, it may also occur with anoxia of other types as well. The present report describes a case of delayed postanoxic encephalopathy with bilateral striatal lesions demonstrated by magnetic resonance imaging. A 27-year-old man exhibited anoxic anoxia caused by upper airway obstruction following general anesthesia for shoulder fracture surgery. Initially he was delirious and markedly excited for one day and became apparently normal for the following three days. Then he relapsed into delayed neurological deterioration with speech and gait disturbance, clumsiness of hand, pyramidal signs and metamorphopsia. Thereafter, he became bed-ridden and fell into semicomatose state with marked motor restlessness, involuntary movement of the tongue and decorticate posture. Twenty-five days later he had a second recovery period after hyperbaric oxygenation that lead to the sequelae with speech and motor disturbances and mild mental changes. I examined the present case as an expert witness in a civil suit eleven years after initial anoxia. The patient showed slight intellectual impairment and personality change. Impairment in figure-ground differentiation and disorders of spatial thought were also observed. Neurological examination revealed anisocoria, dysarthria with acquired stuttering, disturbances of fractionated movement of fingers, writer's cramp and Babinski's sign bilaterally. Postural dystonia of both hands and fingers, rigidity and spasticity of all extremities were also present. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed bilateral lesions of the corpus striatum, especially of the putamen. Some portion of the caudate nucleus was also involved. Cerebral cortices and white matter were slightly atrophic. From the above clinical course and neurological findings, we diagnosed the present case as delayed postanoxic encephalopathy. Ginsberg (1979) noted that in cases of anoxia not related to carbon monoxide, diffuse demyelinative changes of cerebral hemispheral white matter tended to be associated with relapsing clinical course, and gray matter injury was only seen in a few cases. MRI findings in the present case suggest that main site of the lesion to be in gray matter of the corpus striatum. In this respect, the present case is considered to be noteworthy.
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PMID:[A case of delayed postanoxic encephalopathy with bilateral lesions of the corpus striatum]. 281 6

Baclofen is widely used in the treatment of spasticity of spinal origin. It is relatively free of side effects or toxic actions on the nervous system or other organs. Agitation, personality change, and auditory and visual hallucinations have been described following its abrupt withdrawal. One patient with generalized seizures and one with complex partial seizures after baclofen withdrawal have been reported. This paper presents a patient who developed status epilepticus after baclofen withdrawal, and who sustained hypoxic cerebral injury. This observation further emphasizes the possibility of infrequent complications of baclofen therapy, and the advisability of gradual changes in baclofen dosage.
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PMID:Status epilepticus after baclofen withdrawal. 673 10

We report a 21-year-old man with agammaglobulinemia and chronic progressive encephalopathy. The patient was diagnosed as having X-linked agammaglobulinemia at 6 months of age, and gamma globulin supplementation was initiated. He exhibited normal development until he was 11 years old, when he showed a decline in school performance and a personality change. Computed tomography images at that time disclosed diffuse cerebral atrophy. Several generalized tonic-clonic convulsions, myoclonus and spasticity appeared at the age of 13 years. He lost his ability to walk and speak at the age of 17 years old. He is currently 21 years old and displays severe mental deterioration and spastic tetraplegia. Magnetic resonance imaging showed progressive diffuse cerebral atrophy with no change in intensity. The cerebellum and the brain stem were relatively well maintained. Viral isolations were negative and serum antibody titers for rubella, measles, and human immune deficiency virus were not elevated. Our patient's symptoms resemble those previously reported as chronic progressive encephalopathy without viral isolation. This condition may be a complication of agammaglobulinemia. It is possible that the encephalopathy of our patient has the same etiology as that described in the other reports. Further attempts to identify the etiology of the encephalopathy using molecular techniques are necessary.
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PMID:[A case of agammaglobulinemia with chronic progressive encephalopathy]. 795 27

A 57-year-old woman presented with a slowly progressive gait disturbance in 1992 (53 years of age). Over the next year, she gradually began to talk less, but her speech itself became more rapid than before. He speech was frequently too fast even for family members to understand. In 1997, she was admitted to our hospital. On admission, the patient was disoriented but able to follow simple verbal commands, to name things, and to write simple words. Neither apraxia, aphasia, hemispatial neglect, nor a corpus callosum disconnection syndrome was observed. There was no muscle weakness or atrophy. She showed a positive Babinski sign with mild spasticity in the legs and Gegenhalten, but no rigidity. Her speech was monotonous and abnormally fast (cluttering-like speech). Her speech became faster and faster toward the end of sentences, skipping several syllables or even words. She was unable to speak slowly and clearly, even when efforts were made to pace her speech to the speed set by the examiner. She was able to stand only with a wide base of support and body flexion. When standing, she was unable to place one foot directly beside the other; as she tried to have one foot near the other, the former repelled the latter. She had great difficulties in taking her first step forward, and showed rapid freezing of gait even when she managed to succeed in starting. She was able to imitate walking or bicycling with her legs unloaded, indicating that her gait disturbance was a kind of apraxia of gait. Her intelligence was somehow difficult to assess because of her peculiar speech disturbance. However, her family members had noticed her memory disturbance and personality change (offensiveness) since 3 to 4 years before the admission. Moreover, she was defective not only on Hasegawa Damentia Scale-Revised but also on Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices which estimates non-verbal intelligence. It was also noted that she was inattentive and lazy in thinking on questionnaires. Thus we considered that she was at least mildly demented and the type of dementia was of frontal pathology. Laboratory data were all normal except for the head MRI, which demonstrated prominent and thinness of the corpus callosum from the anterior part of the body to splenium without any other brain lesions that could cause the thinness secondarily. Our case resembles two cases reported by Sunohara et al in 1985, together comprising a unique clinical feature. Although Sunohara et al did not refer to the thinness of the corpus callosum in their cases, the clinical profiles in our case and theirs raise the possibility that they form a new disease entity. A further study in a large number of similar cases, including autopsies will provide a conclusion.
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PMID:[A case report of dementia with cluttering-like speech disorder and apraxia of gait]. 1042 42

We present a patient with early-onset Pick's disease in which selective nigral degeneration, KP1 expression of ghost Pick bodies and amyloid P-positive astrocytes were found. We also review the literature on early-onset Pick's disease. A 34-year-old man showed personality change including stereotypical behavior. Muscle rigidity and spasticity developed later, and he died twelve years after the onset of his illness. The brain showed lobar cerebral atrophy prominent in the temporal lobe, and to a lesser degree in the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex. The substantia nigra displayed profound degeneration whereas the head of the caudate nucleus and the putamen were not so seriously affected because the neurons were preserved and only slight astrocytic proliferation was seen. Many Pick bodies were found in the hippocampal formation, and ballooned neurons (Pick cells) were dispersed throughout the cerebral cortex, subcortical grey matter and hippocampal formation. The affected white matter exhibited severe fibrillary gliosis, and numerous astrocytes positive for glial fibrillary acidic protein and microglial cells positive for CR3/43 were found in the atrophied cortical lesions. The intraneuronal Pick bodies expressed ubiquitin, neurofilament and tau, and KP1 distinctly stained ghost Pick bodies. Tau-positive astrocytes were found in the striatum, hippocampal formation, pontine tegmentum, substantia nigra and affected frontotemporal cortices. These astrocytes were also positive for amyloid P. Extensive search of the literature on early-onset Pick's disease disclosed only a few cases with selective nigral degeneration, and we failed to find any differences in duration, progression of the illness and the extent of subcortical gray matter involvement between cases of early-onset and presenile onset of Pick' s disease. We conclude that the striatopallidal and nigral system can be affected independently in Pick's disease and report new immunohistochemical findings.
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PMID:KP1 expression of ghost Pick bodies, amyloid P-positive astrocytes and selective nigral degeneration in early onset Picks disease. 1050 33