Expert review of neurotherapeutics
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Expert Rev Neurother · May 2015
Meta AnalysisPrognostic value of copeptin in patients with acute stroke.
There is a need to improve stroke care through the prompt identification of stroke patients at increased risk of an adverse outcome. ⋯ Copeptin is an independent predictor of poor outcome and mortality for patients with acute stroke.
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Expert Rev Neurother · May 2015
ReviewMotor neuron disease-frontotemporal dementia: a clinical continuum.
Overlap between motor neuron disease (MND) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) occurs at clinical, genetic and pathological levels, and has been recently strengthened through the discovery of the C9orf72 genetic expansion. MND is now considered to be a multisystem disorder in which cognitive involvement may be present and, in some cases, may evolve to frank FTD. Identifying cognitive features in MND can be challenging, while, similarly, motor dysfunction in FTD may be overlooked. As such, the present review aims to decipher the variety of overlapping clinical features across the MND-FTD continuum.
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Sarcoidosis is a multi-organ immune-mediated disease, which manifests as neurosarcoidosis (NS) in approximately 10% of all affected patients. The diagnosis of NS requires a high degree of suspicion as well as histological confirmation. Neurological symptoms in patients with systemic sarcoidosis should not be assumed to be due to NS unless proven true. ⋯ The goals of available treatments include: halting inflammation, prevention of disease worsening and restoring neurological functions whenever possible. With immunosuppression, clinical remission of NS occurs in the majority of patients. However, in some others, the disease may still progress, as no permanent cure is yet available.
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Expert Rev Neurother · May 2015
EditorialWhy have we not yet developed a simple blood test for TBI?
In recent years, traumatic brain injury (TBI) has emerged as a rapidly growing public health challenge. Annually, approximately 1.7 million people will sustain a TBI in the USA and WHO has named TBI the leading cause of death and disability in young adults worldwide, predicting it will become the third leading cause of death in the general population by 2020. ⋯ Despite decades of basic and clinical research, and the identification of hundreds of biochemical markers, presently there is no blood test to objectively assess TBI severity. Recent work suggests treatment-induced variance in the brain's glymphatic clearance may be responsible for the breakdown between biomarker discovery and clinical translation.