Hemiplegia with Athetosis following Diphtheria

Athetosis *

Although several varieties of tremor were known to the ancients, involuntary mobile spasm appears to have remained unrecognized as a physical disease until modern times. The "dancing sickness" of the Middle Ages seems to have been a purely psychic epidemic.7 Parkinson20 quotes Linnaeus and Vogel as establishing the dassification of Hieranosos: Corporis agitatio corntina, indolens, convulsiva, c...

Neurological complications following diphtheria

Unilateral rheumatoid arthritis following hemiplegia.

Hemiplegia may sometimes give rise to peculiar and painful syndromes affecting the paralysed side: these include what has been described as the "shoulder hand syndrome" (Swan, 1954) as well as a "hemi-arthropathy" (Euziere, Pages, Lafon, Mirouze, and Salvaing, 1949) similar in some ways to that seen in Parkinsonism (Perrin and Louyot, 1939). Perhaps even less well known and of great scientific ...

Choreo-athetosis with severe thyrotoxicosis.

Introduction Fasting plasma tyrosine is raised in hyperthyroidism (Hall, Anderson and Smart, 1969) and serum magnesium levels are low in severe thyrotoxicosis (Marks and Ashraf, 1978). Although tyrosine hydroxylase is the rate-limiting enzyme in the metabolism of tyrosine it is conceivable that more dihydroxyphenylalanine is formed under these conditions which may give rise to choreiform moveme...

Chorea and Athetosis

The words "chorea" and "athetosis" have been used rather loosely in the literature to refer both to clinical symptoms and to disease entities. For this reason, and because of the fact that neither the disease nor the symptoms are understood, the great mass of material written on the subject has served chiefly to increase the confusion which now masks the problem. In this paper an attempt will b...