Serial Nerve Conduction Studies in Guillain-Barré Syndrome: Its Usefulness and Precise Timing.

Purpose: Nerve conduction study (NCS) is essential for subclassifying Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). It is well known that the GBS subclassification can change through serial NCSs. However, the usefulness of serial NCSs is debatable, especially in patients with early stage GBS.

More than autophony: a case of Kennedy's disease presenting with autophony as an early clinical manifestation.

Background: As autophony can be accompanied by several conditions, it is important to find co-morbidities. This paper reports a patient with Kennedy's disease (spinobulbar muscular atrophy, an X-linked, hereditary, lower motor neuron disease) having autophony as the first symptom.

Case Report: A 62-year-old male presented to the otorhinolaryngology department with autophony that began 2 years previously and worsened after losing weight 3 months prior to presentation.

Appendicular Skeletal Muscle Mass Associated with Sarcopenia as a Predictor of Poor Functional Outcomes in Ischemic Stroke.

Purpose: Several studies have examined the clinical impact of poststroke and stroke-related sarcopenia on stroke recovery. However, few studies have investigated the effect of sarcopenia detected shortly after stroke on functional prognosis. We predicted functional outcomes using early screening for sarcopenia in patients with acute ischemic stroke.

Predicting Stenosis Aggravation in Follow-Up High-Resolution Magnetic Resonance Images of Patients with Intracranial Atherosclerosis.

Background: High-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (HRMRI) can provide information on the histopathological characteristics of intracranial atherosclerotic lesions causing arterial stenosis; however, its clinical application in intracranial atherosclerosis lacks standardization for predicting stenosis. Therefore, this study investigated the characteristics of HRMRI that can predict progression based on comparisons of follow-up HRMRI.

Methods: We retrospectively enrolled patients who underwent HRMRI within 7 days of symptom onset to evaluate the characteristics associated with intracranial stenotic lesions.

Impaired spleen structure and chemokine expression in ME7 scrapie-infected mice.

We have previously demonstrated that prion protein-deficient (Prnp(0/0)) Zürich I mice display impaired T zone structure resulting from decreased splenic expression of the T cell homing chemokines, CCL19 and CCL21. Prions are transported to, and colonise in, the secondary lymphoid tissues. Therefore, in order to investigate how scrapie infection affects the splenic white pulp structure, we infected C57BL/6 mice with the mouse-adapted scrapie strain ME7 and analysed end-stage prion disease.

Prion protein-deficient mice exhibit decreased CD4 T and LTi cell numbers and impaired spleen structure.

The cellular prion protein is expressed in almost all tissues, including the central nervous system and lymphoid tissues. To investigate the effects of the prion protein in lymphoid cells and spleen structure formation, we used prion protein-deficient (Prnp(0/0)) Zürich I mice generated by inactivation of the Prnp gene. Prnp(0/0) mice had decreased lymphocytes, in particular, CD4 T cells and lymphoid tissue inducer (LTi) cells.

Whole-Body Muscle MRI in Patients with Hyperkalemic Periodic Paralysis Carrying the SCN4A Mutation T704M: Evidence for Chronic Progressive Myopathy with Selective Muscle Involvement.

Background And Purpose: Hyperkalemic periodic paralysis (hyperKPP) is a muscle sodium-ion channelopathy characterized by recurrent paralytic attacks. A proportion of affected individuals develop fixed or chronic progressive weakness that results in significant disability. However, little is known about the pathology of hyperKPP-induced fixed weakness, including the pattern of muscle involvement.

Immunomodulatory Effects of ZYM-201 on LPS-stimulated B Cells.

ZYM-201 is a methyl ester of triterpenoid glycoside from Sanguisorba officinalis which has been used for treatment of inflammatory and metabolic diseases. In this study, immunomodulatory effects of ZYM-201 on B cells were examined in vitro and in vivo. When splenocytes were activated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), the major population which had shown an increase in cell numbers was B cells.

PSSK modulation scheme for high-data rate implantable medical devices.

In this paper, we propose a new modulation scheme for high-data rate wireless body area network inbody communication systems. Simulation results are presented in terms of performance, modulation options, spectrum regrowth by nonlinearity and roll-off values of a pulse shaping filter. In addition, the planning for link budget explains that the proposed modulation approach is appropriate for high-data rate applications in the body channel environment.

Tensor-based AAM with continuous variation estimation: application to variation-robust face recognition.

The Active appearance model (AAM) is a well-known model that can represent a non-rigid object effectively. However, the fitting result is often unsatisfactory when an input image deviates from the training images due to its fixed shape and appearance model. To obtain more robust AAM fitting, we propose a tensor-based AAM that can handle a variety of subjects, poses, expressions, and illuminations in the tensor algebra framework, which consists of an image tensor and a model tensor.

Linear frequency modulation reverberation suppression using difference of singular values.

This letter proposes a reverberation suppression method to improve the target detection probability in reverberation environment induced by a linear frequency modulation signal. Using the singular value decomposition and an assumption of local spatial stationarity, the proposed algorithm suppresses reverberation utilizing the difference of singular values between the reference beam and the current beam of interest. Several experiments using real oceanic reverberation data justify the validity of the proposed algorithm.