Post: 072807

Wenning G et al; J Neur N'surg Psych 1999;67:620-623:
They studied records postmortem of 77 patients with pathologically confirmed parkinsonian syndrome of several types, for latency to onset of orthostatic hypotension or urinary incontinence, finding latency significantly longer in PD than in multiple system atrophy, dementia with Lewy bodies, corticobasal degeneration, or progressive supranuclear palsy.

Mathias C; J Neur N'surg Psych 1999;67:566(editorial):
Commentary on above item: Latency of autonomic dysfunction may be useful to distinguish early PD from other parkinsonian disorders.

Jankovic J et al; J Neur N'surg Psych 1999;67:646-650:
They are sorting out the various types of tremor. One type of postural tremor in PD may be a rest tremor that re-emerges, rather than the postural tremor of essential tremor.

Brown W et al; Neur 1999;53:1212-1218:
Positron-emission tomography (PET) imaging of healthy subjects confirmed that levodopa in substantial amounts converts to dopamine in brain areas other than striatonigral. The function of dopamine in those other areas isn't well understood as yet.

Maraganore D et al; Neur 1999;53:1342-1344:
Autopsy remains the gold standard for diagnosis of PD, but since only about 23% of parkinsonians in this study were autopsied, it isn't a reliable source of statistical incidence data.

Nicholl D et al; Neur 1999;53:1415-1421:
Genotyping of 176 unrelated patients with any of 6 parkinsonism variants, for possible mutants of 5 different suspected genes, showed no association of any mutant with any disorder.

Woo S-I et al; Neur 1999;53:1570-1572:
They looked for alternative splicing patterns of CYP2D genes (one of the types studied above), in patients with various neurodegenerative disorders, but found no association.

Markopoulou K, Langston J; Neur 1999;53:1382-1383(editorial):
Commentary and summary of the two articles immediately above.

Oliveri R et al; Neur 1999;53:1425-1430:
Certain alleles of the short tandem repeat polymorphism of the dopamine receptor D2 gene may reduce the risk of developing peak-dose dyskinesias during levodopa therapy for PD.

Pahwa R et al; Neur 1999;53:1447-1450:
Follow ups at one year of 9 ET patients show that bilateral thalamic stimulation (DBS) effectively reduces disabling tremor of ET, however dysarthria is a possible complication.

Graves A et al; Neur 1999;53:1450-1487:
In a large survey, impaired olfaction together with mutant forms of apolipoprotein E correlated with cognitive decline. However, this study was focused on Alzheimer's, rather than PD.

Nisipeanu P et al; Neur 1999;53:1602-1604:
Three brothers in a Jewish family had autosomal-recessive juvenile parkinsonism. DNA analysis confirmed mutation of the "Parkin" gene, which also occurs in Japanese PD clusters.