Anti-epileptic drugs and hormonal treatments.

Epilepsy and the medications used in its treatment are known to affect the menstrual cycle, aspects of contraception, and bone health in women. Adolescence is an important time to review the diagnosis of both epilepsy and the epilepsy syndrome because of the implications and decisions, which should be made regarding antiepileptic drug (AED) treatment. In girls, once they are on AED therapy, seizure free, and driving, it becomes difficult to change therapy because of the risk of breakthrough seizures and the fact that the new AED may not be as effective as the first.

Geographical clustering of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in South-East England: a population study.

Background: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a degenerative disease of motor neurons that causes progressive paralysis and eventually results in death from respiratory failure. Environmental factors that trigger ALS might result in a pattern of geographical clustering of cases. We tested this hypothesis using the South-East England ALS population register, which covers south-east London, Kent and parts of neighbouring counties.

Birth order and the genetics of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

The cause of ALS remains largely unknown for the 90% with no known family history, but spontaneous mutation to risk alleles of as yet unidentified genes is possible. It has long been recognized that genetic diseases may be more likely to occur in the last born children of a sibship because increased paternal age is associated with an increased spontaneous point mutation rate in sperm. To test the hypothesis that such a mechanism is responsible for sporadic ALS, we have performed a retrospective analysis of birth order position.

A longitudinal study of diffusion tensor MRI in ALS.

In this study, we investigated whether diffusion tensor MRI (DTI) could detect progressive corticospinal tract degeneration in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and whether changes in diffusion variables reflected clinical deterioration. Twenty-three ALS patients and 25 healthy volunteers underwent whole brain DTI. Patients and a subset (n = 12) of controls returned for a second scan.