SARS-CoV-2 infection and acute ischemic stroke in Lombardy, Italy.

Objective: To characterize patients with acute ischemic stroke related to SARS-CoV-2 infection and assess the classification performance of clinical and laboratory parameters in predicting in-hospital outcome of these patients.

Methods: In the setting of the STROKOVID study including patients with acute ischemic stroke consecutively admitted to the ten hub hospitals in Lombardy, Italy, between March 8 and April 30, 2020, we compared clinical features of patients with confirmed infection and non-infected patients by logistic regression models and survival analysis. Then, we trained and tested a random forest (RF) binary classifier for the prediction of in-hospital death among patients with COVID-19.

Impact of SARS-CoV-2 on reperfusion therapies for acute ischemic stroke in Lombardy, Italy: the STROKOVID network.

Whether and how SARS-CoV-2 outbreak affected in-hospital acute stroke care system is still matter of debate. In the setting of the STROKOVID network, a collaborative project between the ten centers designed as hubs for the treatment of acute stroke during SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Lombardy, Italy, we retrospectively compared clinical features and process measures of patients with confirmed infection (COVID-19) and non-infected patients (non-COVID-19) who underwent reperfusion therapies for acute ischemic stroke. Between March 8 and April 30, 2020, 296 consecutive patients [median age, 74 years (interquartile range (IQR), 62-80.

Prion-related peripheral neuropathy in sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Objective: To assess whether the involvement of the peripheral nervous system (PNS) belongs to the phenotypic spectrum of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD).

Methods: We examined medical records of 117 sCJDVV2 (ataxic type), 65 sCJDMV2K (kuru-plaque type) and 121 sCJDMM(V)1 (myoclonic type) subjects for clinical symptoms, objective signs and neurophysiological data. We reviewed two diagnostic nerve biopsies and looked for abnormal prion protein (PrP) by western blotting and real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) in postmortem PNS samples from 14 subjects.

Towards an early clinical diagnosis of sporadic CJD VV2 (ataxic type).

Introduction: Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD) includes a broad spectrum of clinical-pathological subtypes, which complicates the clinical differential diagnosis with other rapidly progressive neurological syndromes.

Aim: To provide a better characterisation of clinical features and results of diagnostic investigations, especially at an early disease stage, in patients with sCJDVV2, the second most common sCJD subtype.

Methods: We evaluated neurological symptoms/signs, and results of brain diffusion-weighted resonance imaging (DW-MRI), electroencephalographic recordings (EEG) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarker studies in 120 patients with a definite (n=93) or probable (n=27) diagnosis of sCJDVV2.

Progressive supranuclear gaze palsy without parkinsonism: a case of neuro-Whipple.

We report the case of a 69-year-old man with a 7-month history of severe progressive supranuclear gaze palsy associated with mild cognitive decline and sleep disturbances, but not parkinsonism. After a period spent consulting a range of different specialists, the appearance of brachial myoclonus prompted his referral to a movement disorders specialist. Duodenum biopsy confirmed the suspicion of neuro-Whipple disease.

Time ordering in frontal lobe patients: a stochastic model approach.

Frontal lobe patients reproduced a sequence of capital letters or abstract shapes. Immediate and delayed reproduction trials allowed the analysis of short- and long-term memory for time order by means of suitable Markov chain stochastic models. Patients were as proficient as healthy subjects on the immediate reproduction trial, thus showing spared encoding and short-term memory.