Biomarkers to identify infection among borderline QuantiFERON results.

Background: Screening for tuberculosis (TB) infection often includes QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus (QFT) testing. Previous studies showed that two-thirds of patients with negative QFT results just below the cut-off, so-called borderline test results, nevertheless had other evidence of TB infection. This study aimed to identify a biomarker profile by which borderline QFT results due to TB infection can be distinguished from random test variation.

Chronic fatigue syndrome: Abnormally fast muscle fiber conduction in the membranes of motor units at low static force load.

Objective: Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and fibromyalgia (FM) are disorders of unknown etiology and unclear pathophysiology, with overlapping symptoms of - especially muscular -fatigue and pain. Studies have shown increased muscle fiber conduction velocity (CV) in the non-painful muscles of FM patients. We investigated whether CFS patients also show CV abnormalities.

The relation of fibromyalgia and fibromyalgia symptoms to self-reported seizures.

Objective: Several epidemiological and clinical reports associate fibromyalgia (FM) with seizure disorders, and clinical studies associate FM diagnosis with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. However, these associations rely on self-reports of being diagnosed with FM or unstandardized clinical diagnosis in combination with small samples. We investigated the association of FM and self-reported seizures using a large rheumatic disease databank and the current established self-reported, symptom-based FM diagnostic criteria.

Bilateral synchronous gamma range firing of bulbar motor units during tonic seizures.

We present a patient with tonic seizures of the bulbar muscles. Video-EEG recording during the multiple attacks showed no ictal EEG abnormalities. The tonic seizures were clearly visible as EMG artefacts on the EEG recording and consisted of 3-6 symmetric tonic bursts of EMG activity of 2-4 seconds and an interval of 2-6 seconds.