Nervous System Diseases

Researchers have devoted themselves to devising ways of blocking the production or accumulation of beta-amyloid. Now scientists are studying other protein targets, including tau.

A 9 kg 15-month-old girl with new-onset generalized tonic-clonic seizure was discharged with instructions to take carbamazepine suspension (45 mg PO BID [10 mg/kg/d]), which she'd been receiving in the hospital. In the clinic, her carbamazepine blood level was subtherapeutic. The dose was increased to 68 mg PO BID. A week later, the carbamazepine level was still subtherapeutic, but no doses had been missed. What’s the problem here?

If drugs could be developed to target tau, they might prevent much of the neurodegeneration that characterizes Alzheimer disease and help prevent or delay dementia.

Most patients have a sophisticated idea of what causes their headaches, but the chances of this information being wrong are higher than desirable unless the patient formally experimented with triggers.

Heart disease and stroke risk prediction tools may be more useful in predicting cognitive decline in middle-aged patients than a dementia risk test, according to a new study.

Persons who eat a high-fiber diet experience a lower risk of first-time stroke, according to a new meta-analysis that supports current guidelines to increase fiber consumption.

Adding informal, unpaid care to the equation as much as doubled the estimated total national costs.

With no drugs to offer a cure for multiple sclerosis, clinicians should have a wide variety of treatment options available for their patients.

Five-year survival rates are as high as 80% for most forms of childhood cancer. The chemotherapies that help prolong life, however, can have devastating side effects.

The reduction in dementia is not simply the result of the drugs reducing their blood pressure.

This condition is a more important risk factor than previously thought and should not be taken lightly.

Neurologic complications associated with Down syndrome include dystonia, epilepsy, psychiatric problems, cardiac defects, and auditory and visual defects.

Stigma correlated most strongly with inability to work and was greater for chronic migraine than for epilepsy or episodic migraine.

Charcot neuroarthropathy is progressive in nature. The longer the acute degenerative process persists, the greater the destruction, resultant deformity, and potential for other complications.

The worldwide sex ratio of MS has been substantially changing over the last century. Environmental factor/s appear to be at work in a sex-specific manner.

A series of studies unequivocally show a true absence of autoimmune disease aggregation in MS patients and their families.

The Charcot foot, if unmanaged, can lead to a severe, limb-threatening condition. It must be distinguished from the similarly presenting and more common infectious processes so that proper treatment can be instituted immediately, limiting the resultant deformities and other complications.

Two studies suggest that for many people with MS, minimally invasive interventional radiology treatments—such as angioplasty for chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency—can provide effective palliative therapy.

MRI is now central to the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Because of the modality’s high sensitivity to inflammation and demyelinating plaques, roughly 90% of all MS diagnoses are now based on MRI findings.

Sodium levels are known to be elevated inside the brain stem, cerebellum, and temporal poles early in the course of MS. This study showed total sodium concentrations to be significantly increased in advanced disease—particularly in normal-appearing brain tissues, concomitant with disability.

Randolph W. Evans, MD, chief of neurology at Park Plaza Hospital and clinical professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, reviews postconcussion syndrome and post-traumatic headache.