P Piccini

..Our data also show that the capacity to release normal DA levels in prefrontal areas after a pharmacological challenge is preserved in severe stages of the disease...

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..Functional neuroimaging holds the promise of improved diagnosis and allows assessment in early disease. In this review, the use of PET and single photon emission CT in the differential diagnosis of IPD are discussed...

..This review discusses recent findings in this field, with a focus on the detection and characterization of receptor binding and presynaptic dopamine changes in movement disorders...

..This review focuses on these recent advances in neuroimaging technology and their use for the diagnosis and assessment of PD and other parkinsonian disorders...

..The rarity of reports of familial PSP may be attributed in part to an inability to detect subclinical disease in affected relatives who subsequently die before symptoms clinically develop...

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..Despite an ongoing disease process, grafted neurons can thus continue for a decade to store and release dopamine and give rise to substantial symptomatic relief...

..The other patient did not improve clinically or radiologically. Our results indicate that striatal transplantation in HD may be beneficial but further studies are needed to confirm this...

..In contrast, relief of parkinsonian tremor and axial symptoms is not related to striatal synaptic dopamine levels and presumably occurs via extrastriatal mechanisms...

..This is the first in vivo documentation of cortical dopaminergic deficiency in PSP. Reduced striatal (18)F-dopa uptake in susceptible relatives may predict later clinical disease...

..Finally, our data provide evidence that long-term immunosuppression can be withdrawn without interfering with graft survival or the motor recovery induced by transplantation...

..PK PET may be a useful marker of active subclinical disease and a means of investigating the efficacy of neuroprotection strategies in PGCs...

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..This probably reflects both contributions from other affected brain structures and high variance in these measures...

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..Four had subtle extrapyramidal signs. Parkin heterozygosity is a risk factor for nigrostriatal dysfunction and in some may contribute to late-onset Parkinson disease...

..Depression associated with Parkinson disease (PD) has a different symptom profile to endogenous depression. The etiology of depression in PD remains uncertain though abnormal serotonergic neurotransmission could play a role...

..These findings confirm that striatal dopamine release is a component of movement sequencing and show that dopamine release can be detected in early Parkinson's disease during a behavioural manipulation...

..0059 +/- 0.0028) in the absence of this drug. These findings are compatible with clinical doses of tolcapone having a significant blocking effect on peripheral and central COMT but not DDC activity in PD...

..Although subclinical reductions of striatal (18)F-dopa uptake are common in carriers of a single parkin mutation their slow rate of progression suggests that few if any of these will develop clinical parkinsonism...

..INTERPRETATION: This provides evidence that links sensitization of ventral striatal circuitry in humans to compulsive drug use...

..However, the two carriers scanned twice showed no progression over a 7-year period. The slower rate of disease progression in parkin patients may explain the near normal longevity of these patients with young onset parkinsonism...

..This review aims to summarise the current literature on ICDs, their phenomenology, epidemiology, clinical features, pathophysiology and management...

..Novel markers of amyloid plaque load will also help clarify the etiology of dementia in PD...

..In this article the value of imaging as a biomarker for testing neuroprotective agents in PD is reviewed...

..These findings suggest that parkin patients and IPD patients with similar striatal dysfunction have different patterns of monoaminergic involvement, with more widespread dysfunction in IPD...

..It is an early event in HD pathophysiology and could contribute to the impairment in neuropsychological performance in these patients...

..In contrast, mesocortical dopaminergic transmission appears well preserved in early PD patients...

..The subclinical loss of striatal dopamine storage capacity found in the PARK6 carriers implies that the unidentified gene on the short arm of chromosome 1 exhibits either haploinsufficency or a dominant negative effect...

..Further longitudinal studies are needed to fully elucidate this link...

..These kindreds are distinct from other Parkinsonian kindreds with identified genetic loci (PARK1-4) and provide further evidence for genetic heterogeneity in familial Parkinson's disease...

..We suggest that SCA6, in common with SCA2 and SCA3, may be associated with Parkinsonism attributable to nigral loss and dopaminergic dysfunction. Moreover, isolated cases may be confused with multiple system atrophy...

..This article aims to provide an overview of the principles of PET and its applications to clinical neurology...

..The recent development of new radiolabelled ligands provides positron emission tomography (PET) imaging with a role for studying early aspects of the MS pathology...

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..The method can be naturally extended to other functional imaging modalities (SPECT, functional MRI)...

..These findings suggest that in PD there is impairment of catecholamine release from peripheral sympathetic presynaptic terminals, which correlates with motor impairment...

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..Parkin-positive patients appear to have a greater susceptibility to the exposure to dopaminergic medication than IPD patients, which in turn might be an indirect effect of their genetic mutation...

..Cortical reductions in D2 binding may contribute to the behavioural problems reported in parkin patients...

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