US NEUROLOGY – VOLUME 11 ISSUE 2 – FALL 2015

Welcome to the latest edition of US Neurology, which features articles covering a wide range of topics relevant to the practice of neurology, and to the wider biomedical community. This issue begins with articles on two progressive diseases of the central nervous system causing motor and cognitive disability: multiple sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). […]

Achieving wellness is a high priority for people living with multiple sclerosis (MS). They want to know what they can do today to feel their best, and whether lifestyle interventions can impact the course of the disease. People with MS are also among the most informed, engaged, and self-advocating patients with chronic illness—proactively seeking information […]

The importance of pregnancy management in multiple sclerosis (MS) is underscored by the fact that MS affects three times more women than men, with first symptoms typically during the peak reproductive years. Childbearing—An Achievable Goal for Many Women with Multiple Sclerosis While providers were cautious in prior decades, it is increasingly clear that most women […]

Patent foramen ovale (PFO) is an opening or flap in the atrial septum that exists as a normal and vital component of intrauterine life. PFO allows for the transportation of rich oxygenated blood to bypass the lungs and flow from the right to the left atrium during fetal development. Shortly after birth, a reduction in […]

Significant advances in understanding the genetic mechanisms behind epilepsy have been made in the past 20 years, especially in the case of epileptic encephalopathies. Though approximately 20–30 % of epilepsies can be attributed to an obvious acquired etiology, such as stroke or traumatic brain injury,1,2 genetic factors are estimated to underlie 40–70 % of all […]

Both “nervous system Lyme disease” and “chronic Lyme disease” are labels that are used in quite different ways, leading to controversy, frustration, distrust, and worse. Most neurologists use the first to describe patients with unambiguous nervous system infection with Borrelia burgdorferi, the tickborne spirochete responsible for Lyme disease. Most infectious-disease and other specialists, if they […]

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease, clinically characterized by progressive memory loss. To date, an estimated 5.2 million people have the disease in the US, and the total number of people with AD-related dementia is projected to rise to 13.8 million by 2050.1,2 At present, there is no cure for the disease, […]

It is no small task to choose from among the many accomplishments and advances in child neurology that epitomize the year’s achievements. Making choices means making inclusions and omissions others would not have made. Choices notwithstanding, the small sampling presented at the 2015 American Academy of Neurology meeting in Washington, DC, US, serves to reflect […]

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative condition that is frequently described as being either familial or sporadic. Since the discovery of mutations in SOD1 as a cause of ALS, there has been an explosion in genetics research, leading to the discovery of at least 22 genes of major effect, of which C9orf72, SOD1, TDP43 […]

Acute inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (AIDP) is an acute monophasic polyradiculoneuritis whose incidence ranges from 0.89 to 1.89 cases (median, 1.11) per 100,000 person-years in Western countries.1,2 Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) is a common, albeit underdiagnosed and potentially treatable, disease having an estimated prevalence of 1.2–2.3 per 100,000.3 Although CIDP symptoms do not usually reach […]

Restless legs syndrome (RLS), or Willis–Ekbom disease (WED), is a sensorimotor disorder having well-known standardised diagnostic criteria1 that have been revised recently by the International Restless Legs Syndrome Study Group.2 The genetic basis of RLS has not been definitively established,3 but the most important biochemical findings are dopaminergic dysfunction and iron deficiency.4 The interest for […]

William Gower’s statement that seizures beget seizures1 is often quoted as a first recognition of seizure-dependent progressive character of epilepsies. It is worth saying that this assumption has by no means a general value as it does not apply to many types of epilepsies, namely to the idiopathic ones. A progressive course towards drug refractoriness […]