Influence of anticholinergic activity in serum on clinical symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is well known as a disease characterized by degeneration of cholinergic neuronal activity in the brain. It follows that patients with AD would be sensitive to an 'anticholinergic burden', and also that medicine with anticholinergic properties would promote various clinical symptoms of AD. Despite the relevance of this important phenomenon to the clinical therapeutics of AD patients, few reports have been seen concerning the relationship between anticholinergic burden and clinical AD symptoms.

Argyrophilic grain disease with delusions and hallucinations: a pathological study.

No clear clinical syndrome for argyrophilic grain disease (AGD) has yet been identified. Previous studies have documented its clinical features, namely, personality changes characterized by emotional disorder involving aggression or ill temper and relatively well-preserved cognitive function, but the clinical manifestations of delusions and hallucinations as they appear in AGD have not been thoroughly described. Here, we report on a 72-year-old Japanese AGD patient who showed psychiatric symptoms, memory impairment and emotional change.

Adverse effects of anticholinergic activity on cognitive functions in Alzheimer's disease.

Background: Elderly patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) take more medicines, other than those for anti-dementia agents, than healthy people and are sensitive to anticholinergic medications. There are only a few reports, however, on the relationship between cognitive function and anticholinergic activity in AD patients, which is caused by taking prescribed medication.

Methods: We measured serum anticholinergic activity (SAA) in 76 AD patients referred to a Psychogeriatric Unit and separated them into SAA positive group (n= 26, SAA (+) group) and SAA negative group (n= 50, SAA (-) group).

Pick's disease with Pick bodies: an unusual autopsy case showing degeneration of the pontine nucleus, dentate nucleus, Clarke's column, and lower motor neuron.

We report a 51-year-old female with Pick's disease with Pick bodies (PDPB) showing a brainweight of 530 g. This case was considered to be a very rare case of PDPB, in which the lesion developed in the temporal and frontal lobes and later spread to the parietal lobe, occipital lobe, brainstem, cerebellum and spinal cord. This case showed very atypical clinicopathological findings.

Ubiquitin-positive frontotemporal lobar degeneration presenting with progressive Gogi (word-meaning) aphasia. A neuropsychological, radiological and pathological evaluation of a Japanese semantic dementia patient.

A patient with progressive anomia and alexia with agraphia for kanji (Japanese morphograms) is described. The patient showed a deficit in single-word comprehension and on-reading (a type of reading that conveys phonetic value) dominance in kanji reading, i.e.

Neurofibrillary tangles and deposition of oxidative products in the brain in cases of myotonic dystrophy.

Myotonic dystrophy (MyD) is a neuromuscular degenerative disorder that is neuropathologically characterized by minor changes, such as the presence of neurofibrillary tangles (NFT), thalamic inclusions and functional brainstem lesions. In the current study, we conducted an immunohistochemical analysis to examine the distribution of NFT and formation of oxidative products in the brain specimens of 12 patients with MyD. Neurofibrillary tangles were found in the limbic system and/or the brainstem of all the cases examined but there were no senile plaques.

Pathological heterogeneity of the precentral gyrus in Pick's disease: a study of 16 autopsy cases.

This report concerns the upper motor neuron involvement in 16 autopsy cases of Pick disease with Pick bodies, including 11 cases reported by us previously. Prominent, circumscribed atrophy of the precentral gyrus, conspicuously in the lower portion, was noted in one case. Loss of Betz cells and astrocytosis of the precentral gyrus layer V were encountered in 15 cases (94%) and eight cases (50%), respectively.

First episodes of behavioral symptoms in Alzheimer's disease patients at age 90 and over, and early-onset Alzheimer's disease: comparison with senile dementia of Alzheimer's type.

We evaluated dementia symptoms to clarify the character of dementia with Alzheimer's disease (AD) observed in the oldest old patients and that of dementia with early-onset AD. Subjects were consecutive AD inpatients admitted for the first time at age of 90 years and over because of behavioral symptoms (demented nonagenarian group: D90G; n=18) and those with 24 consecutive inpatients with AD with early-onset (EOG). The Gottfries, Brane and Steen's scale and the Dementia Behavior Disturbance scale were used to evaluate the symptoms and troublesome behaviors.

[Intramedullary lipomatous ependymoma: case report].

A 51 year-old man was admitted to our hospital with poor general health and neurological disturbances with paresthesia, dysuria and defecation disorder. Neuroimaging showed a syringomyelia cyst from C1 to conus medullaris, together with a intramedullar tumoral mass in T6-T7. Histological examination of the surgical specimen led to the diagnosis of lipomatous ependymoma.

Degeneration of the inferior olive in spinocerebellar ataxia 6 may depend on disease duration: report of two autopsy cases and statistical analysis of autopsy cases reported to date.

This report concerns a clinicopathological study of two autopsied patients with spinocerebellar ataxia 6 (SCA6), and a statistical analysis between neuronal loss of the inferior olive and disease duration of 15 SCA6 autopsy cases reported to date, including the two cases reported in this study. Cases 1 and 2 came from independent Japanese families. Case 1 developed gait disturbance at age 35 years and died at age 78 years; she had a CAG-repeat expansion of the SCA6 gene (25/13).

[Argyrophilic grain disease clinically mimicking Parkinson's disease with dementia: report of an autopsy case].

Argyrophilic grain disease (AGD) is a neurodegenerative dementia, which is neuropathologically characterized by the spindle-or comma-shaped argyrophilic grains scattered in the neuropil of hippocampal area. Several research reports have disclosed the pathological, biochemical and genetic characteristics of AGD, whereas the clinical aspects have not been fully investigated. Here we report an autopsy case of AGD.

One-step capillary isoelectric focusing of the proteins in cerebrospinal fluid and serum of patients with neurological disorders.

One-step capillary isoelectric focusing (cIEF), which uses reduced but non-zero electroosmosis flow to mobilize the focused proteins, was applied to the analysis of proteins in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum of patients with various neurological disorders. Under the conditions employed, pathological changes in the CSF proteins were clearly detected on the electropherograms within 25 min, although the serum proteins did not vary significantly between samples. The present one-step cIEF system seems to be useful in routine laboratory examinations of a large number of CSF samples as an aid in neurological diagnosis.