Background Levodopa, a pro-drug of dopamine, has been used successfully to treat symptoms of Parkinson’s disease for fifty years and remains the mainstay of medical management. However after years of treatment, with increasing loss of dopaminergic presynaptic terminals, symptomatic control … Continue reading
Introduction Stroke is the most common cause of disability in Western Countries, and its lifetime risk is 1 in 6 for men and 1 in 5 for women. While managing acute stroke patients in hyperacute stroke units overall has … Continue reading
Introduction While thymectomy has long been considered an option to treat myasthenia even if there is simply thymic tissue present rather than thymoma or thymic carcinoma, it has been uncertain how much benefit is achieved by undergoing this major … Continue reading
Background The rather specific dopaminergic deficit in Parkinson’s disease (PD) has meant that dopaminergic replacement medications have proven to be an effective mainstay of treatment of the condition. However, later on in the course of the disease, such treatment … Continue reading
Background At this Journal Club it was decided to review a historical paper on the pathophysiology underlying autoimmune neuromyotonia. The paper, “Autoantibodies Detected to Expressed K+ Channels Are Implicated in Neuromyotonia”, from Annals of Neurology (1997, 41:238-246), used a novel … Continue reading
Background Ischaemic stroke is typically either thrombotic (clotting within a cerebral vessel) or embolic (passage of clot material from a more proximal vessel to become lodged in a cerebral vessel). A proportion of embolic stroke events will arise from arterial … Continue reading
Background Giant cell arteritis is an inflammatory condition of certain blood vessels that presents in the elderly. Those vessels affected include the: temporal artery resulting in headache and scalp tenderness over the inflamed artery, ciliary artery resulting in ischaemic optic … Continue reading
Background Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a neurological condition characterised by a fatiguing weakness of certain muscle groups, particularly those that control eye opening, eye movements, speech and swallowing When severe the proximal muscles of the limbs and respiratory muscles may … Continue reading
Background It has long been known that there exist variants of Parkinson’s disease (PD), loosely and perhaps inaccurately described as PD plus syndromes, that may carry features of Parkinsonism but which also have other clinical features. Such conditions have distinct … Continue reading
Background Enteroviruses, which may cause gastroenteritis or upper respiratory tract infections, are well-known to have neurotropism – a predilection in a proportion of individuals to spread to certain types of neurones, thereby resulting in characteristic neurological syndromes that occur after … Continue reading
