Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) or Strümpell-Lorrain syndrome is a heterogeneous group of inherited disorders, with prevalence ranged from 4.3 to 9.6 cases per 100,000 population. A common feature of these disorders is the slowly progressive and often severe spasticity, noticeably especially in the low limbs. Conventionally, HSP is divided into two clinical groups, uncomplicated (pure spast...

111 families, and Paskind and Stone (1933) also summarized the literature with accounts of another 36 reports from 40 families. Since then about 50 further reports have appeared, covering some 60 families, bringing the total so far to 176 reports of 215 families. Of these the majority have originated in Germany or elsewhere in Europe, but with a substantial number from the Americas. In Britain,...

Hereditary ataxia and spastic paraplegia are heterogeneous monogenic neurodegenerative disorders. To date, a large number of individuals with such disorders remain undiagnosed. Here, we have assessed molecular diagnosis by gene panel sequencing in 105 early and late-onset hereditary ataxia and spastic paraplegia probands, in whom extensive previous investigations had failed to identify the gene...

T he hereditary spastic paraplegias (HSPs) are inherited neurologic disorders in which the primary symptom is insidiously progressive difficulty walking due to lower extremity weakness and spasticity. There have been great strides in our knowledge of this group of disabling disorders; 20 HSP loci and 9 HSP genes have been discovered. Insights into the molecular causes of HSPs are beginning to e...

Three patients who suffer from spastic paraplegia are described who belong to two generations in one family. One of the patients, who has had symptoms and signs for at least 10 years, has a monozygous twin who is unaffected. Using blood groups and chromosomal polymorphisms, the probability of monozygosity is estimated to be 0.99986. The observation of nonpenetrance in familial spastic paraplegi...

Two female sibs of first cousin Iranian parents were found to have the syndrome of spastic paraplegia, optic atrophy with poor vision, microcephaly, and normal cognitive development. Karyotype analysis showed a normal female constitution in one and a male constitution (46,XY) in the other. The XY female showed normal female external genitalia, normal uterus and tubes, and streak gonads. SRY gen...

The hereditary spastic paraplegias are a group of neurodegenerative conditions that all share the principal clinical feature of progressive lower limb spastic paralysis, caused by either failure of development or progressive degeneration of the corticospinal tract. The conditions are characterised by extreme genetic heterogeneity, with at least 20 genes involved. Until recently, no functional o...