Load force during manual transport in Parkinson's disease.

Objectives: To search for a physiological method for the measurement of upper extremity dexterity during activities of daily life in Parkinson's disease (PD).

Materials And Methods: We examined load force output during manual transport in seven patients with PD and 10 healthy controls. PD patients were measured in both the non-medicated and medicated states.

Manual transport in Parkinson's disease.

We analyze hand dexterity in Parkinson's disease patients (PD) and control subjects using a natural manual transport task (moving an object from one place to another). Eight PD patients and 10 control subjects carried out the task repeatedly at maximum speed both in off and on medicated status. The movement parameters and the grip and load forces were recorded.

Changes of event related potential and cognitive processes in patients with subclinical hypothyroidism after thyroxine treatment.

Objective: Recently, it has been repeatedly shown that patients with subclinical hypothyroidism (SH) formerly considered as completely symptom free, may have numerous minimal, often non-specific subjective complaints, and that in those patients it is possible to prove many subtle but objective deviations. We decided to quantify whether there are event related potential (ERP) deviations as electrophysiological markers of cognitive activity in patients with SH and whether ERP could be influenced by thyroxine treatment leading to normalization of TSH level in serum.

Subjects And Design: Event related potential (ERP) was examined in thirty one patients (mean age 52 +/- 12.

Grip and load force coordination during a manual transport movement: findings in healthy participants.

During transport of an object using the precision grip with thumb and index finger, a modulation of the grip force is needed in response to the forces evoked by the movement. We measured the grip force (GF) and the load force (LF) in 10 healthy participants moving a 640-g object forward and upward. The task was repeated with various speeds.

Amantadine infusion in treatment of motor fluctuations and dyskinesias in Parkinson's disease.

Efficiency and safety of amantadine sulfate (AMS) infusions were investigated in late stage complications of Parkinson's disease (PD). In an open-label study, 21 PD patients suffering from motor fluctuations and/or dyskinesias were administered AMS infusions (PK-Merz, 400 mg per day) during seven days. Oral AMS treatment followed.

On automatic determination of movement phases in manual transport during the precision grip.

Integrated movement and force analysis of the precision grip-lift sequence (grasping an object between index finger and thumb) is a useful tool in studies on manipulative hand functions. The everyday Manual Transport tasks, moving objects from one place to another, exhibits powerful test possibilities because it includes the precision grip. In this study, as a step towards the exploitation of these possibilities, we created an algorithm that extracts sequence of phases in this task.

[Effect of normalization of an isolated increase in TSH on the neuropsychological profile of patients].

Background: Isolated TSH increase--"subclinical hypothyreosis" (SH) appears to be comparatively common. Its incidence among women over sixty has been estimated up to 17%. Though SH was assumed to be entirely asymptomatic, recent findings revealed various fine subjective and objective symptoms of the disease.