The costs of dementia subtypes to California Medicare fee-for-service, 2015.

Introduction: Dementia is among the costliest of medical conditions, but it is not known how these costs vary by dementia subtype.

Methods: The effect of dementia diagnosis subtype on direct health care costs and utilization was estimated using 2015 California Medicare fee-for-service data. Potential drivers of increased costs in Lewy body dementia (LBD), in comparison to Alzheimer's disease, were tested.

Parkinson's disease associated with pure repeat expansion.

Large, non-coding pentanucleotide repeat expansions of ATTCT in intron 9 of the gene typically cause progressive spinocerebellar ataxia with or without seizures and present neuropathologically with Purkinje cell loss resulting in symmetrical cerebellar atrophy. These repeat expansions can be interrupted by sequence motifs which have been attributed to seizures and are likely to act as genetic modifiers. We identified a Mexican kindred with multiple affected family members with expansions.

Is PARKIN parkinsonism a cancer predisposition syndrome?

Mutations in the PARKIN gene (chromosome 6q25-27) were first described in 1998 in families with "juvenile" autosomal recessive parkinsonism. More than 180 causative variants in the PARKIN gene have been identified; point mutations and copy number variants (i.e.