Rinshō shinkeigaku = Clinical neurology
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Neuropathic pain is a debilitating pain that occurs after nerve injury and is generally resistant to currently available treatments including morphine. Such pain involves aberrant excitability in dorsal horn neurons after nerve injury. Emerging evidence indicate that the enhanced activity of dorsal horn neurons requires a communication with microglia. ⋯ The mechanisms of microglia activation are unknown, but our recent study shows that interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) can be an important factor that causes spinal microglia activation after nerve injury. IFN-beta upregulates P2X4R in microglia and causes P2X4R-dependent allodynia. These findings suggest that purinoceptors in spinal microglia is crucial for pathological intractable pain.
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Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is caused by the lack of dystrophin protein at the sarcolemma. Exon skipping by antisense oligonucleotides is a novel method to restore the reading frame of the mutated DMD gene, and rescue dystrophin production. ⋯ We also tried systemic delivery of antisense Morpholino to skip exon 51 in mdx52 mice. It is important to verify the effectiveness and side effects of antisense Morpholino in experimental animal models such as dystrophic dogs or mdx52 mice, before clinical trials in DMD patients.
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The Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) Surveillance Committee has identified 1,241 patients with prion diseases during 1999-2009, including 953 with sporadic CJD (sCJD) (76.8%), 207 with genetic prion diseases (16.7%), 78 with environmentally acquired prion diseases (6.3%), and 3 with unclassified CJD. Among atypical cases of sCJD, most common was MM2 type including the cortical and thalamic forms. The genetic cases included 84 with a PrP V180I mutation (40.6%), 37 with a P102L mutation (17.9%), 34 with a E200K mutation (16.4%), 32 with a M232R mutation (15.5%), 4 with a P105L mutation (1.9%), and so on. ⋯ Combined with the results by the previous surveillance systems, a total number of dCJD in Japan was 135. The vCJD patient had a history of short stay in the UK and presented with periodic electroencephalogram in the late stage. Although there was no evidence of association of surgical procedures or blood transfusion with sCJD, 4.5% of the sCJD patients underwent operations after the onset of sCJD, including neurosurgical for 0.8% and ophthalmic for 1.9%, requiring more attention on prion diseases to reduce the iatrogenic risk.
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Biography Historical Article
[The Japanese Society of Neurology. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the founding].
In the last nineteenth century, Japan produced two pioneers in the neurological field. Perhaps Prof. Hiroshi Kawahara's most monumental contribution was the first publication of the textbook of neurology in Japan. ⋯ After the end of World War II, neurology came to receive recognition of the identity. In 1960, Seizo Katsunuma, the professor of Nagoya University, and Shigeo Okinaka, the professor of the University of Tokyo, started anew "the Japanese Society of Neurology", which was independent of the former Society founded in 1902. In this paper, the outlines of the history and development of the former and the present Japanese Societies of Neurology for these one hundred years are presented.
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Historical Article
Neurology education and history of Taiwan Neurological Society.