News

  • February
    4th

    Tricks in dystonia: ordering the complexity.

    Ramos VF, Karp BI, Hallett M. - February 4, 2014

    Sensory tricks are various manoeuvres that can ameliorate dystonia. Common characteristics are well known, but their variety is wide, sensory stimulation is not necessarily the critical feature, and their physiology is unknown. To enumerate the various forms of sensory tricks and describe their nature, research findings and theories that may elucidate their neurophysiologic mechanism, we reviewed the literature pertaining to sensory tricks, including variants like motor tricks, imaginary tricks, forcible tricks and reverse sensory tricks.

  • February
    1st

    Deep brain stimulation for dystonia.

    Hu W, Stead M. - February 1, 2014

    Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an effective surgical treatment for medication-refractory movement disorders, and has been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for treatment of dystonia. The success of DBS in the treatment of dystonia depends on our understanding of the anatomy and physiology of this disorder and close collaboration between neurosurgeons, neurologists, clinical neurophysiologists, neuroradiologists and neuropsychologists. Currently, pallidal DBS is an established treatment option for medically refractive dystonia.

  • February
    1st

    Psychiatric disorders in idiopathic-isolated focal dystonia.

    Lehn A, Mellick G, Boyle R. - February 1, 2014

    Idiopathic-isolated focal dystonia (IIFD) is a movement disorder characterised by involuntary, sustained muscle contractions, leading to abnormal postures. Psychopathology is frequent in patients with IIFD, and while traditionally this was thought to be a secondary phenomenon, there is emerging evidence for shared neurobiological mechanisms. We conducted a single-centre cross-sectional study of 103 consecutive patients with IIFD and two comparison groups: 78 consecutive patients with hemifacial spasm (HFS) and 93 healthy control subjects.

  • January
    31st

    Relevance of sonography for botulinum toxin treatment of cervical dystonia: an expert statement.

    Schramm A, Bäumer T, Fietzek U, Heitmann S, Walter U, Jost WH. - January 31, 2014

    Botulinum neurotoxin A (BoNT A) is the first-line treatment for cervical dystonia. However, although BoNT A has a favorable safety profile and is effective in the majority of patients, in some cases the treatment outcome is disappointing or side effects occur when higher doses are used. It is likely that in such cases either the target muscles were not injected accurately or unintended weakness of non-target muscles occurred. It has been demonstrated in clinical trials for spastic movement disorders that sonography-guided BoNT A injections could improve treatment outcome.

  • January
    24th

    The phenotypic spectrum of DYT24 due to ANO3 mutations.

    Stamelou M, Charlesworth G, Cordivari C, Schneider SA, Kägi G, Sheerin UM, Rubio-Agusti I, Batla A, Houlden H, Wood NW, Bhatia K - January 24, 2014

    Genes causing primary dystonia are rare. Recently, pathogenic mutations in the anoctamin 3 gene (ANO3) have been identified to cause autosomal dominant craniocervical dystonia and have been assigned to the dystonia locus dystonia-24 (DYT24). Here, we expand on the phenotypic spectrum of DYT24 and provide demonstrative videos.

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