Historic review: the foundation-period and the first 15 years of the "Gesellschaft fuer Neuropaediatrie" (GNP) between 1950 and 1990.

After the end of Nazi terrorism with many crimes against neuropsychiatric and disabled people, from 1950 on detection and treatment of these diseases in children and adolescents grew continuously: in the 50s and 60s, several German books on neuropediatric topics were published, a journal was founded, and junior pediatricians established many scientific contacts with foreign neuropediatricians. In 1972, the team of the Kehl-Kork Epilepsy Clinic invited neuropediatric colleagues from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland for a first joint workshop. On March 4th, 1975, the Neuropaediatric Society of the German-speaking countries was founded in Heidelberg and its goals, as well as guidelines for membership, were formulated.

Historic review: a short history of neuropediatrics in Germany between 1850 and 1950.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, there has been increasing knowledge about the diagnosis and therapy of diseases of the central and peripheral nervous system and muscle in children. The leading causes were cerebral palsy, epilepsy, inflammatory and degenerative diseases, and the innate reduction in intelligence. Because of the often lack of healing options, many pediatricians had little interest in treating these children and left their care to the pedagogues and psychologists.

[How can child development disorders be recognized in early childhood?].

In the last 10 years beside the well known developmental criterias like turning from back to prone, crawling, standing up, free walking, speaking of the first words and the position-reactions, the exact observation of the spontaneous movements, of handling-planing and the speech development could be detected as more important factors for the examination of development. Certain parameters of explanation of developmental disorders are to differenciate from uncertain and only probably one. Of special interest are the frequent problems like excessive crying, feeding- and sleeping disorders.

Tyrosine hydroxylase deficiency causes progressive encephalopathy and dopa-nonresponsive dystonia.

Tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) is the key enzyme in the biosynthesis of the catecholamines dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. Recessively inherited deficiency of TH was recently identified and incorporated into recent concepts of genetic dystonias as the cause of recessive Dopa-responsive dystonia or Segawa's syndrome in analogy to dominantly inherited GTP cyclohydrolase I deficiency. We report four patients with TH deficiency and two with GTP cyclohydrolase I deficiency.