Background: Hemifacial spasm (HFS) is caused by pulsative vascular compression of the root exit zone (REZ) of the facial nerve. However, the mechanism that causes the offending vessels to compress the REZ has not been clarified. Elongation of intracranial arteries due to arteriosclerosis is one possibility, but such arteriosclerotic changes are not observed very frequently among patients with HFS. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether arteriosclerotic changes would contribute to the pathogenesis of HFS.
Methods: This study included 111 HFS patients, all of whom were Japanese. The prevalence rates of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes mellitus were examined as risk factors of atherosclerosis, and the cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI) was measured as an indicator of arteriosclerotic change. The severity of white matter lesions (WMLs) in HFS patients was measured by magnetic resonance imaging. These data were compared with data from healthy Japanese controls.
Results: The prevalence rates of the risk factors for atherosclerosis in the HFS patients were not higher than those in the general Japanese population. The CAVI scores for the HFS patients were similar to, or lower than those in the healthy controls for all age groups except 60 to 69-year-old men. The severity of WMLs in the HFS patients was not significantly worse than that in the controls.
Conclusions: It is suggested that arteriosclerotic changes are not involved in the pathogenesis of HFS, and that vascular compression syndromes are attributable to anatomical features of the intracranial arteries and facial nerves formed during the prenatal stage.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00701-015-2628-9 | DOI Listing |
Nat Med
January 2025
BioNTech US, Cambridge, MA, USA.
New treatment approaches are warranted for patients with advanced melanoma refractory to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) or BRAF-targeted therapy. We designed BNT221, a personalized, neoantigen-specific autologous T cell product derived from peripheral blood, and tested this in a 3 + 3 dose-finding study with two dose levels (DLs) in patients with locally advanced or metastatic melanoma, disease progression after ICB, measurable disease (Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors version 1.1) and, where appropriate, BRAF-targeted therapy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLOS Digit Health
January 2025
Department of Geriatric Medicine, The Canberra Hospital, ACT Health, Canberra, Australia.
Osteoporotic hip fractures (HFs) in the elderly are a pertinent issue in healthcare, particularly in developed countries such as Australia. Estimating prognosis following admission remains a key challenge. Current predictive tools require numerous patient input features including those unavailable early in admission.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Venous congestion (VC) sets in weeks before visible clinical decompensation, progressively increasing cardiac strain and leading to acute heart failure (HF) decompensation. Currently, the field lacks a universally acknowledged gold standard and early detection methods for VC.
Methods: Using data from the GEO database, we identified VC's impact on HF through key genes using Limma and STRING databases.
NMC Case Rep J
December 2024
Department of Neurosurgery, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan.
Hemifacial spasm (HFS) is a disorder that causes involuntary movements of the ipsilateral facial muscles because of vascular compression of the facial nerve. Microvascular decompression (MVD), a surgical procedure to detach the culprit vessel from the nerve is believed to be the most effective treatment for HFS. Nevertheless, in the rare case in which the vessel penetrates the nerve, positioning the vessel sufficiently far from the nerve is challenging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Surg
December 2024
Department of Anesthesiology, Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, P.R. China.
Background: Hand-foot syndrome (HFS) and oral mucositis (OM) are common adverse events during cancer chemotherapy and can significantly decrease patients' quality of life and chemotherapy adaptation, however, prevention strategies of these complications yet to be established.
Methods: Patients with stage I-III breast cancer, who had surgery and needed pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD)-based adjuvant chemotherapy were screened, recruited and randomly assigned to receive either probiotics or placebo (three capsules, twice/day) treatment during the course of chemotherapy from Nov. 2019 to Aug.
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