Unusual forehead tremor in four patients with essential tremor.

Forehead tremor has only been reported in two patients with essential tremor, one with rhythmic tremor and the other with dystonic tremor. We report 4 new patients with essential tremor who present a 4-6 Hz frontal tremor registered by electromyography and unusual features like frontal tremor preceding limb tremor or unilateral involvement. Frontal tremor is present in some patients with essential tremor, sometimes preceding limb tremor.

Apoptosis of peripheral blood lymphocytes in Parkinson patients.

Neuronal cell death by apoptosis is a mechanism involved in Parkinson's disease and indirect signs of apoptosis have been found in brain neurons and blood lymphocytes. The present study was aimed to directly assess the presence of enhanced apoptosis in lymphocytes from 89 idiopathic Parkinson's disease patients, 33 untreated and 56 treated, compared with 33 healthy individuals. The study of both spontaneous and activation-induced apoptosis of T-lymphocyte subsets by annexin-V binding and flow cytometry showed that Parkinson patients increased the expression of Fas in circulating CD4(+) T cells, mainly "naive," that correlated with the decrease of these cells in blood.

Mutant ubiquitin and p62 immunoreactivity in cases of combined multiple system atrophy and Alzheimer's disease.

Recent studies have shown the co-existence of alpha-synuclein and phosphorylated tau (pTau) in several neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we report two autopsy cases of combined multiple system atrophy (MSA) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). In both cases, abundant alpha-synuclein-positive glial and neuronal cytoplasmic inclusions were found in the brainstem, amygdala and hippocampal formation.