Parkinsonism & related disorders
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Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · Sep 2009
Comparative StudyLong-term effects of bilateral deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus on depression in patients with Parkinson's disease.
To study the long-term effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the bilateral subthalamic nucleus (STN) on depression in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and to discuss the mechanism. ⋯ The improvement in motor symptoms resulting from STN-DBS can improve depression in PD patients, but its long-term effects were unremarkable. Within the treatment range, the higher the mean value of bilateral voltages then the more severe was the depression in PD patients.
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Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · Sep 2009
Comparative StudyGrammar improvement following deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic and the pedunculopontine nuclei in advanced Parkinson's disease: a pilot study.
Combined deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic (STN) and pedunculopontine (PPN) nuclei has been recently proposed as surgical treatment of advanced Parkinson's disease. STN stimulation alone has been shown to provide selective improvement of the grammatical aspect of language. ⋯ On the contrary, an interesting trend towards reduction of ungrammatical errors (particularly substitution of free and inflectional morphemes) was found when stimulating the STN, and also the PPN, when the STN was switched off. These findings replicate previous observations on the STN, and provide the rationale for further investigation of the role of the PPN in processing linguistic grammar.
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Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · Jul 2009
Mutational screening of the mitochondrial transcription factors B1 and B2 (TFB1M and TFB2M) in Parkinson's disease.
Mitochondrial dysfunction has been implicated in Parkinson's disease (PD). The nuclear encoded transcription factors A, B1 and B2 are essential for mitochondrial DNA replication. Sequence variants at the genes encoding TFAM, TFB1M and TFB2M could contribute to the risk of developing PD. ⋯ In addition to previously reported polymorphisms, we found several rare variants in patients and controls. Allele frequencies for all the nucleotide changes did not differ between patients and controls. Our work suggests that DNA variants in TFB1M and TFB2M did not contribute to the risk for PD in our population.
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Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · May 2009
Review Biography Historical ArticleProfessor Karl-Axel Ekbom and restless legs syndrome.
The authors provide an historical review of restless legs syndrome, emphasizing the contribution of Professor Karl-Axel Ekbom, the Swedish neurologist who made the first detailed clinical description of this disease.
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Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · May 2009
Prevalence and clinical correlates of apathy in Parkinson's disease: a community-based study.
The objective of this study was to examine the prevalence and clinical correlates of apathy in a population-based sample of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and to assess whether apathy may present as a primary behavioural disturbance independent from depression and cognitive impairment. A total of 232 patients derived from an epidemiological study of PD in Rogaland county, Western Norway, completed a comprehensive evaluation of motor, cognitive, and depressive symptoms. Apathy was assessed with the motivation/initiative item of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale. ⋯ Apathy was significantly associated with higher depression scores, lower cognitive functioning, and more severe motor symptoms. When excluding patients with depression, dementia, cognitive impairment with no dementia (population-based age- and education-corrected norms for the Mini-Mental State Examination), and those using psychotropic medication, 5% of the 232 patients had apathy. In conclusion, our study shows that apathy is common in the general PD population, may present as an independent behavioural disorder, and suggests that apathy in PD may be related to dysfunction of the nigro-striatal pathway or that brain pathology underlying apathy and progression of motor symptoms develops in parallel.