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Query: UMLS:C0085632 (apathy)
 4,089 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

We reported three siblings with complicated hereditary spastic paraplegia. The striking features in these patients were characterized by early onset of gait disturbance, mental deficiency, and dystonia. The most likely diagnosis was Mast syndrome. Patient 1: A 44 years-old woman. She first developed gait disturbances at age of 8. She was admitted in our hospital because of progressive spastic paraplegia. Neurological examination revealed mental deficiency, saccadic pursuit eye movement, speech disturbance of cerebellar type, ataxia, and spastic paraplegia. She showed also dystonia in the face, tongue, and trunk. MRI showed cerebellar atrophy. Patient 2: A 51 years-old brother of the patient 1. He had mentally retarded. Late teens he developed gait disturbance. Gradually he manifested spastic paraplegia, dysarthria, dysphasia, mental deficiency, and ataxia. He also showed incontinence of urine and feces. Then he became bedridden, apathetic, and showed forced crying. MRI showed diffuse brain atrophy. Patient 3: A 48 year-old woman. This woman, a sister of the patient 1, showed progressive gait disturbance and dysarthria. She also developed incontinence, apathy, and dystonia. She became bedridden, responding to simple questions with only occasional single-word answers. Her speech was slurred, and spastic paraplegia was noted. MRI showed diffuse brain atrophy including marked atrophy of the cerebellum.
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PMID:[A family of hereditary spastic paraplegia with dementia, ataxia, and dystonia]. 1199 89

In the nineties, Marin proposed to define apathy as a clinical syndrome due to a lack of motivation. The syndrome is characterized by a diminished goal-directed overt behaviors, a lack of interest or concern for social and personal activities and a lack of responsiveness to positive and negative events. Apathy is clearly distinct from depression and can be observed in many conditions, in healthy people as well as in psychiatric disorders such as depression or schizophrenia. It is very common in patients with brain lesions involving the frontal lobes, the right hemisphere, but also in degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. Motivation, considered as the source of apathy by Marin, is not a simple construct. It refers to a complex set of multiple affective and cognitive processes. However, it is considered, either in an energetic acception, as a single quantitative variable, a force which impulses action but not direct behavior or, in a more specific acception, as the factor which direct behavior towards specific actions. The description of apathy by Marin and the scales designed to its assessment, are based on the first acception. The term apathy is only descriptive, such as those of dysphasia or anosognosia. They do not allow to study the mechanisms underlying the motivation disorders, essential process for the management of apathetic patients. A tentative qualitative approach to assess motivation disorders is proposed, using a semi-structured interview. However, it should be stressed that motivation can not be directly assessed: motivation is a concept to explain some behavior disorders and an inference from the study of behavior.
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PMID:[Apathy: a useful but limited concept]. 1568 65

Delirium may present with hyperactive, hypoactive or mixed clinical pictures. The signs of hypoactive delirium are lethargy, confusion, apathy, hypersomnia, muttering, difficulty in maintaining attention, and difficulty in understanding and performing commands. Valproate is commonly used for the treatment of epilepsy and bipolar disorders. It is also used for the management of alcohol withdrawal delirium and agitative-aggressive deliriums. However, few reports are available about the valproate-induced delirium. In this report, we present a 46 years-old woman with bipolar disorder for 14 years. During her last two hospital admissions, she had been diagnosed with manic episode with psychotic features and she had received valproate. She experienced three hypoactive delirium episodes lasting 2-3 days throughout the treatment period of first week. The patient predominantly had the following signs; vomiting, hypersalivation, confusion, drowsiness, dysphasia, and hypoactivity. At the first day of delirium episode, serum valproate level was found to be within the therapeutic range (98.4, 117.1, and 65.6 mug/ml; respectively). In addition, she had normal results of cranial MRI, complete blood count, urine analysis, electrocardiogram, ALT, AST, albumin, bilirubin, BUN, creatinine and electrolytes. The serum ammonia level of the patient could not been measured due to limitations of laboratory facilities. The patient's consciousness improved dramatically 2-3 days after cessation of valproate. In conclusion, valproate can induce delirium at therapeutic blood levels in some patients via various mechanisms and this side effect has to be considered during valproate use.
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PMID:[Valproate induced hypoactive delirium in a bipolar disorder patient with psychotic features]. 2020 7