The prevalence of Parkinson's disease in an Arab population, Wadi Ara, Israel.

Background: The prevalence of Parkinson's disease varies among ethnic and geographic groups around the world, being very low in China and high in Argentina. While the main etiology of the disease has yet to be determined, environmental, occupational and genetic factors seem to play important roles.

Objectives: To estimate the prevalence of PD in an Arab Muslim population in Israel, using the drug tracer approach.

Huntington disease in subjects from an Israeli Karaite community carrying alleles of intermediate and expanded CAG repeats in the HTT gene: Huntington disease or phenocopy?

We report a cluster of patients from a Karaite Jew community with a movement disorder suggestive of Huntington disease (HD), in some cases associated with repeat lengths below the edge of 36 CAG repeats. The study describes the clinical and genetic features of four patients who were followed over several years. Patients belonged to an inbred family in whom progressive chorea, manifesting predominantly with dystonia and cerebellar features, developed during middle age.

Acetylcholinesterase/paraoxonase interactions increase the risk of insecticide-induced Parkinson's disease.

Exposure to agricultural insecticides, together with yet incompletely understood predisposing genotype/phenotype elements, notably increase the risk of Parkinson's disease. Here, we report findings attributing the increased risk in an insecticide-exposed rural area in Israel to interacting debilitating polymorphisms in the ACHE/PON1 locus and corresponding expression variations. Polymorphisms that debilitate PON1 activity and cause impaired AChE overproduction under anticholinesterase exposure were strongly overrepresented in patients from agriculturally exposed areas, indicating that they confer risk of Parkinson's disease.

Epilepsia partialis continua possibly caused by cerebellar lesion.

The cerebellum is known to have inhibitory effects on seizures. Nevertheless, cerebellar dysplastic lesions can be epileptogenic. We report a patient presenting with epilepsia partialis continua (EPC) following a hemorrhagic cerebellar lesion.

Facial paralysis and meningitis caused by Rickettsia typhi infection.

Involvement of cranial nerves was rarely reported in various rickettsioses. We present here for the first time a case of peripheral facial paralysis associated with Rickettsia typhi infection.

Spontaneous supratentorial intracerebral hemorrhage. Criteria for short-term functional outcome prediction.

Background And Purpose: To identify the significant prognostic factors, upon admission, and construct a set of criteria to predict short-term functional outcome of patients with intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH).

Methods: The records as well as the radiological findings, of 184 consecutive cases of spontaneous supratentorial intracerebral hemorrhage, that were treated medically, were reviewed. The hemorrhage was graded according to size, mass effect and intraventricular extension.