CONTEXT Writer's cramp is a kind of focal hand dystonia that appears when individuals are writing. Since pharmacological treatment has not shown the desired therapeutic response, a study on immobilization of the damaged musculature was performed on two individuals with writer's cramp, using splints with the objective of reducing the handwriting abnormalities. CASE REPORT Two patients presenti...

Writer's cramp is a task-specific dystonia that leads to involuntary hand postures during writing. Abnormalities of sensory processing may play a pathophysiological role in this disorder. Electrophysiology studies in a monkey model of focal dystonia have revealed de-differentiation of sensory maps and the existence of single cells in hand regions of area 3b with enlarged receptive fields that e...

BACKGROUND Cathelicidin is a proposed defender against infection of the urinary tract via its antimicrobial properties, but its activity has not been delineated in a dedicated cystitis model. METHODS Female C57Bl/6 mice, wild type or deficient in cathelin-related antimicrobial peptide (CRAMP; an ortholog of the sole human cathelicidin, LL-37), were infected transurethrally with the cystitis-d...

BACKGROUND We identified cathelicidin related antimicrobial protein (CRAMP) secreted from telomere dysfunctional bone marrow cells of late generation telomerase knockout mice (G4mTerc(-/-)), increased in blood and various tissues. It can represented human aging and disease. The main aim of this study is to investigate the sensitive direct enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method to anal...

We report the occurrence of writer's cramp in a 31 year old B27 positive man with a recent past history of Reiter's syndrome. Although aware of the close linguistic relation between the pen and the penis, we have not previously encountered the two diseases in a single patient.

In this paper, kinematic characteristics of writing are compared in 5 patient with writer’s cramp who performed a set of standardized writing task. The kinematic characteristics thumb and forefinger force before and during cramp. The effect of writing on different inclined supporting surfaces is also investigated. Our results indicate that inclined surfaces aspects of writing discomfort in writ...

THE voluntary muscular system forms in an average male about 43 per cent. of the total body weight. It is a very uniform system and is composed of aggregations of individual muscle fibres each of which are complex multinucleated cells, consisting of a sarcolemmal sheath and its nuclei, a motor end plate, and contractile substance. This system is affected by a large group of primary diseases, i....

Cathelicidins are mammalian defense peptides with direct antimicrobial activity and the potential to exert other immunomodulatory effects during the innate immune response. One such function of human cathelicidin is direct binding and inhibition of bacterially derived lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a ligand of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) . Here, we show that physiological concentrations of exogenous...