8 research outputs found
Predicting Driver Safety in Parkinson’s Disease: An Interim Report of an Ongoing Longitudinal Study
This article summarizes the baseline results of an ongoing longitudinal, NIH-funded study on prediction of driver safety in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Patients with even mild to moderate PD who drive and live independently suffer from visual and cognitive dysfunction, which appear to be the main contributors to decreased driving performance and safety, rather than the motor dysfunction for which PD is known
The Value of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Possible or Probable Multiple Sclerosis
The potential value of MRI in establishing a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) will be more apparent if contrasted with the established efficacy of other commonly used diagnostic aids in MS. Selected studies of the efficacy of CSF immunoelectrophoresis, visual evoked response, CT scan, blink reflex and MRI in clinically definite MS are presented here for that purpose
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Efficacy and safety of botulinum type A toxin (dysport) in cervical dystonia : Results of the first us randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study
CAG repeat expansion in Huntington disease determines age at onset in a fully dominant fashion
Objective: Age at onset of diagnostic motor manifestations in Huntington disease (HD) is strongly correlated with an expanded CAG trinucleotide repeat. The length of the normal CAG repeat allele has been reported also to influence age at onset, in interaction with the expanded allele. Due to profound implications for disease mechanism and modification, we tested whether the normal allele, interaction between the expanded and normal alleles, or presence of a second expanded allele affects age at onset of HD motor signs. Methods: We modeled natural log-transformed age at onset as a function of CAG repeat lengths of expanded and normal alleles and their interaction by linear regression. Results: An apparently significant effect of interaction on age at motor onset among 4,068 subjects was dependent on a single outlier data point. A rigorous statistical analysis with a wellbehaved dataset that conformed to the fundamental assumptions of linear regression (e.g., constant variance and normally distributed error) revealed significance only for the expanded CAG repeat, with no effect of the normal CAG repeat. Ten subjects with 2 expanded alleles showed an age at motor onset consistent with the length of the larger expanded allele. Conclusions: Normal allele CAG length, interaction between expanded and normal alleles, and presence of a second expanded allele do not influence age at onset of motor manifestations, indicating that the rate of HD pathogenesis leading to motor diagnosis is determined by a completely dominant action of the longest expanded allele and as yet unidentified genetic or environmental factors. Copyright © 2012 by AAN Enterprises, Inc