Rinshō shinkeigaku = Clinical neurology
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The first post-publication external review of the Japanese Guidelines for the Management of Stroke 2004 had been published in "Stroke" in 2009. Considering to these results, new stroke guidelines 2009 has been published in Japan on November 2009. Main renewed and revised points in guidelines 2009, particularly important for the neurologist were introduced, focusing on acute stroke treatment such as administration of t-PA, management of patients with life-style related diseases as well as new antiplatelet therapy for the secondary stroke prevention.
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Review Case Reports
[Clinical features and mechanisms of chronic migraine and medication-overuse headache].
Chronification of migraine headaches is one of the most urgent issues. Chronic migraine (CM) and medication overuse headache (MOH) are defined in international classification of headache disorders II (ICHD-II). Appendix criteria of CM and MOH were submitted and will take over the original criteria. ⋯ Apart from medication overuse, there have been reported some new risk factors for migraine chronification, including frequent headache, female sex, obesity, low income, low education, stress by life events, depression, snoring, sleep disorders, and past history of neck or head injury. Chronification of migraine severely disturbs the quality of patient's life. More attention should be paid and the further and extensive studies are urgently necessary.
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Human prion diseases are classified into 3 categories according to etiologies: idiopathic of unknown cause, acquired of infectious origin, and genetic by PRNP mutation. The surveillance committee have analyzed 2,494 cases and identified 1,402 as prion diseases. Most of them are idiopathic, namely sporadic CJD (77%) with less genetic and acquired prion diseases (17% and 5%, respectively). ⋯ We also have some incidents in which brain surgery was done before the diagnosis of prion disease and many other patients were operated using the same operating instruments before their sterilization against prion disease had been done. The explanation of possibility of prion disease infection to the patients and their follow-up was started by the incident committee. It is very important for all the nations to cooperate with each other in order to overcome this intractable disease.
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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS) while neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is an inflammatory disease of the CNS that selectively affects the optic nerves and spinal cord. Recently, a specific IgG against NMO, designated NMO-IgG, was discovered, and the relevant antigen was found to be aquaporin 4 (AQP4), one of the major water channel proteins in the CNS. The sensitivity of NMO-IgG/anti-AQP4 antibodies for NMO varies from 30% to 80%, while specificity is 90-100%. ⋯ None of six other patients with magnetic resonance imaging-confirmed Baló's disease was seropositive for anti-AQP4 antibodies. I therefore propose that AQP4 astrocytopathy, in the absence of anti-AQP4 antibodies, is characteristic of Baló's disease. Since a similar loss of AQP4 without perivascular deposition of immunoglobulin and complement is also observed in autopsied CNS tissues from NMO and MS cases, I consider that autoantibody-independent astrocytopathy may widely occur in human CNS demyelinating diseases, including Baló's disease, MS and NMO.