BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Multiple system atrophy with predominant cerebellar ataxia is a disabling neurologic disease. However, effective management has not yet been established. We conducted a short-term, open-label preliminary study to assess the benefits of intravenous amantadine treatment in patients with probable multiple system atrophy with predominant cerebellar ataxia. METHODS Twenty pa...

The majority of pedigrees with autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxia (ADCA) harbour a pathological expansion of a trinucleotide repeat at one of five genetic loci: spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA) 1, 2, 3, 6, and 7. Other loci have been associated with ADCA in a limited number of families, but in a significant number of pedigrees the genetic basis remains uncertain. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) defects...

The cerebellum is implicated in maintaining the saccadic subsystem efficient for vision by minimizing movement inaccuracy and by learning from endpoint errors. This ability is often disrupted in degenerative cerebellar diseases, as demonstrated by saccade kinetic abnormalities. The study of saccades in these patients may therefore provide insights into the neural substrate underlying saccadic m...

neurodegenerative disorders, clinically characterized by a cerebellar syndrome with imbalance, unsteady gait and limb incoordination, dysarthria, and disturbed eye movements. Often there are additional neurological or systemic signs, which are highly variable depending on the genetic subtype and on the individual phenotype. The genetic background of heredoataxias has been largely identified dur...

OBJECTIVES The cerebellum is known to play a strong functional role in both motor control and motor learning. Hence, the benefit of physiotherapeutic training remains controversial for patients with cerebellar degeneration. In this study, we examined the effectiveness of a 4-week intensive coordinative training for 16 patients with progressive ataxia due to cerebellar degeneration (n = 10) or d...

BACKGROUND Nonprogressive cerebellar ataxias are characterized by a persistent, nonprogressive ataxia associated with cognitive impairment. Cerebellar hypoplasia on imaging is variable but is not predictive of the degree of ataxia or cognitive impairment. OBJECTIVE To describe a family with a nonprogressive cerebellar ataxia associated with cognitive and motor impairments that improve with ag...

Episodic ataxia type 1 is a rare, autosomal dominant neurological disorder caused by missense mutations of the Kv1.1 gene from the Shaker K channel subfamily. To study the functional effects of the disease-causing mutations in a robust K channel background, we introduced seven different episodic ataxia type 1 substitutions into the corresponding, conserved residues of the Shaker K channel. K ch...

Background: Ataxia with oculomotor apraxia type 1 (AOA1) shows early onset with autosomal recessive inheritance and is caused by a mutation in the aprataxin (APTX) gene encoding for the APTX protein. Methods: In this study, a 7-year-old girl born of a first-cousin consanguineous marriage was described with early-onset progressive ataxia and AOA, with increased cholesterol concentration and decr...

Adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) is a rare and progressive neurogenetic disease that may manifest disparate symptoms. The present study aims at investigating the role of ataxic variant of ALD (AVALD) in patients with adult-onset cerebellar ataxia, as well as characterizing their clinical features that distinguish AVALD from other cerebellar ataxias. Mutations in the ATP binding cassette subfamily D m...

Autosomal recessive cerebellar ataxias (ARCA) are a heterogeneous group of rare neurological disorders involving both central and peripheral nervous system, and in some case other systems and organs, and characterized by degeneration or abnormal development of cerebellum and spinal cord, autosomal recessive inheritance and, in most cases, early onset occurring before the age of 20 years. This g...