OBJECTIVE To investigate whether the cardiac R-R interval variation (RRIV) is of value in differentiating patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) from multiple system atrophy (MSA). BACKGROUND RRIV assessment is a simple procedure, reflecting mainly vagal efferent activity. Reduced RRIV was reported in MSA. METHODS RRIV at rest and after 120 s of deep breathing was assessed blindly to clinic...

alpha-Synuclein is a major constituent of glial cytoplasmic inclusions (GCIs), which are pathognomic for multiple system atrophy (MSA). We have previously demonstrated that in normal human brain, alpha-synuclein mRNA has a restricted pattern of neuronal expression and no apparent glial expression. The current study used double-label in situ hybridization to determine if alpha-synuclein mRNA is ...

MetaMorph is a novel application of multiple sequence alignment (MSA) to natural language morphology induction. Given a text corpus in any language, we sequentially align a subset of the words of the corpus to form an MSA using a probabilistic scoring scheme. We then segment the MSA to produce output analyses. We used this algorithm to compete in the 2009 Morpho Challenge. The F-measure of the ...

A hypervariable region (HVR) previously identified in the carboxy-terminal one-third of the Babesia bovis variable merozoite surface antigen family was more extensively analyzed in merozoite surface antigen 1 (MSA-1) from 16 strains and isolates. The MSA-1 HVR is proline rich and contains three semiconserved motifs nearly identical to those described for the related family member MSA-2. Two MSA...

Multiple system atrophy (MSA) is a rare, fatal, rapidly progressing neurodegenerative disorder of uncertain etiology that is clinically characterized by a variable combination of parkinsonism, cerebellar impairment, autonomic dysfunction and pyramidal tract signs. The mean age of disease onset is 56±9 years with poor prognosis and a mean survival of 9.5 years. The prevalence is 1.9 to 4.9 cases...

OBJECTIVE Can dysautonomic symptoms occurring within a year of developing motor symptoms distinguish Multiple system atrophy-Parkinsonian (MSA-P) from Parkinson's disease (PD)? PATIENTS AND METHODS Seventy-two Parkinsonian patients diagnosed as probable PD or MSA-P. RESULTS PD (n = 58, 80.6%) and MSA (n = 14, 19.4%) patients were of similar age and had motor symptoms for similar duration. P...

Current clinical diagnostic tools are limited in their ability to accurately differentiate idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) from multiple system atrophy (MSA) and other parkinsonian disorders early in the disease course, but eye movements may stand as objective and sensitive markers of disease differentiation and progression. To assess the use of eye movement performance for uniquely charact...

BACKGROUND Multiple system atrophy (MSA) is diverse in clinical phenotype, disease progression, and prognosis. Sudden death is a leading cause of death in patients with MSA. OBJECTIVE To determine what clinical factors affect the progression and survival prognosis of those with MSA. DESIGN A retrospective review of the medical records of 49 consecutive Japanese patients with pathologically ...

BACKGROUND Formal laboratory testing of autonomic function is reported to distinguish between patients with Parkinson's disease and those with multiple system atrophy (MSA), but such studies segregate patients according to clinical criteria that select those with autonomic dysfunction for the MSA category. OBJECTIVE To characterise the profiles of autonomic disturbances in patients in whom th...

The clinical features of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) overlap with other parkinsonian syndromes, including multiple system atrophy (MSA). Autonomic dysfunction is a characteristic of MSA, but has also been described in PSP. We therefore report results from a series of physiological studies of cardiovascular autonomic function in 35 PSP and 20 MSA subjects, and 26 age-matched healthy con...