Neurologia

In the clinical neurosciences, decision-making becomes ever more complicated because of rapidly emerging new diagnostic tests and treatments and increasing demands from patients to participate in their management. This concise but wide-ranging handbook reviews the epidemiology of neurological disease and the treatment and prognosis of all major diseases of the nervous system. Part one offers essential guidance for clinicians to quantitative methods in research, including genetic epidemiology, decision analysis, meta-analysis, outcomes research and survival analysis, and thus provides a good understanding of the evidence underlying clinical management. The second part is devoted to individual neurological diseases, covering etiology, diagnosis, prognosis, interventions, and implications for clinical practice. With contributions from leading international authorities, this book is an invaluable guide to clinical decision-making for neurologists and others involved in the management of neurological disease.

A large percentage of patients seen by a general neurologist have neuromuscular disorders. Many of these disorders have specific courses of treatment; however, when there is no specific treatment, the therapy is aimed at controlling symptoms, retarding progression, increasing the time of remission, and improving the quality of the patient's life. "Neuromuscular Diseases: Expert Clinicians' Views" emphasizes practical guidelines for diagnosis and treatment that have been proven successful in the contributors' experience. This clinical reference is essential for all practitioners involved in the care of patients with muscular dystrophies, congenital myopathies, myasthenia gravis, and other neuromuscular diseases.

"Blood-Brain Barrier Permeability Changes After Subarachnoid Haemorrhage: An Update".

The term "muscular dystrophy" (MD) describes a group of primary genetic disorders of muscle that often have a distinctive and recognizable clinical p- notype, accompanied by characteristic, but frequently not pathognomonic, pathological features. Research into the molecular basis of the MDs by a c- bination of positional cloning and candidate gene analysis has provided the basis for a reclassification of these disorders, with genetic and protein data augmenting traditional clinically based nomenclature. These findings have brought insights into the molecular pathogenesis of MD, with an increasing number of potential pathways involved in arriving at a dystrophic phenotype. Some common themes can be recognized, however, including the involvement of five members of the dystrophin-associated complex (dystrophin and four sarcoglycans) in different types of MD, and the involvement of two nuclear envelope proteins in producing an Emery-Dreifuss MD phenotype. Other d- ease-associated genes appear to cause MD in a completely unrelated way, such as the involvement of calpain 3 in a form of limb-girdle muscular dystrophy. Section 1 of Muscular Dystrophy: Methods and Protocols reviews tra- tional strategies used to identify MDs. Meantime, techniques developed as a result of the research strategies described previously have become an integral part of the management of many patients with MD and their families, and these techniques are addressed in Sections 2 (DNA-based tests) and 3 (p- tein-based analyses). The continued effort to translate this enhanced und- standing into a molecular cure or treatment for MD is reviewed in Section 4.