Neuromyelitis optica after a spinal anaesthesia with bupivacaine.

We report the case of a 53-year old woman who developed a neuromyelitis optica (NMO or Devic's syndrome) after a spinal anaesthesia with bupivacaine. To our knowledge, the use of bupivacaine in human has not been associated to neurological complications like myelitis or NMO. The pathogenesis of this complication will be discussed.

Multiple sclerosis tremor and the Stewart-Holmes manoeuvre.

The objective of this study is to define tremor and cerebellar dysfunction and determine whether kinetic and postural tremor correlate with cerebellar dysfunction in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Cerebellar symptoms such as dysmetria often interfere with tremor evaluation in MS. The Stewart-Holmes (SH) manoeuvre, which has been recently quantified, may offer a selective evaluation of cerebellar dysfunction in such patients.

[Early diagnosis of bacterial brain abscesses: interest of diffusion-weighted MRI].

Three cases of bacterial brain abscesses, in immunocompetent patients, are reported. In all these cases, the diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance (MRI) with apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) map has permitted an early diagnosis and a rapid treatment. This emergency MRI showed in the three cases a low signal on TI-weighted images, a high signal on T2-weighted and echo-planar images, and a decrease of ADC (0.

Detection of genomic viral RNA in nerve and muscle of patients with HCV neuropathy.

Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV)-associated neuropathy is usually associated with mixed cryoglobulinemia (MC) and vasculitis. MC may contain viral RNA, and tissues showing vasculitis may contain intracellular HCV. Local HCV replication remains to be evidenced.

Clinical relevance of electrophysiological tests in the assessment of patients with Huntington's disease.

Assessment programs recently designed to follow-up patients with Huntington's disease (HD) in therapeutic trials have not included electrophysiological testing in the list of mandatory examinations. This omission is likely due to the current lack of data establishing a clear correlation between the electrophysiological results and those of clinical assessment. We address this issue in a cohort of 36 patients at relatively early stages of the disease (I and II).