Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) describes a heterogeneous group of genetic neurodegenerative disorders in which the most severely affected neurons are those of the spinal cord. These disorders are characterised clinically by progressive spasticity and weakness of the lower limbs, and pathologically by retrograde axonal degeneration of the corticospinal tracts and posterior columns. In recen...

BACKGROUND This short report arose from a follow-up study of children previously diagnosed with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) encephalopathy and spastic diplegia and is among the first to describe that increased lower limb muscle tone in children with a confirmed HIV encephalopathy diagnosis may resolve over time in some cases. RESULTS Of 19 children previously diagnosed with HIV encepha...

Shape memory alloys (SMAs) are a very promising class of metallic materials that display interesting nonlinear properties, such as pseudoelasticity (PE), shape memory effect (SME) and damping capacity, due to high mechanical hysteresis and internal friction. Our group has applied SMA in the field of neuromuscular rehabilitation, designing some new devices based on the mentioned SMA properties: ...

The aim of this study was to compare the effect of neuro-development treatment (NDT) technique and NDT plus botulinum toxin type A (BTX-A) injection on the reduction of spasticity and improvement of the quality of movement patterns of lower limb in hemiplegic patients. For this purpose, 15 hemiplegic (8 female and 7 male cases) with an age range of 27-70 years participated in this study. The pa...

The aim of this study was to compare the effect of neuro-development treatment (NDT) technique and NDT plus botulinum toxin type A (BTX-A) injection on the reduction of spasticity and improvement of the quality of movement patterns of lower limb in hemiplegic patients. For this purpose, 15 hemiplegic (8 female and 7 male cases) with an age range of 27-70 years participated in this study. The pa...

Background: There is a plethora of literature with some conflicting findings on the effects implementing strength and/or aerobic training or circuit exercises to improve motor function children spastic hemiplegic cerebral palsy (CP). Circuit form body conditioning that involves endurance training, resistance high-intensity aerobics, and performed in circuit. Purpose: To investigate effect progr...

BACKGROUND Most patients with Friedreich ataxia (FA) have a GAA trinucleotide repeat expansion in intron 1 of the FA gene (FRDA) on both arms of chromosome 9. However, some patients are compound heterozygotes and harbor a GAA expansion on one allele and a point mutation on the other. Compound heterozygous patients with FA who have a GAA expansion and a G130V mutation have been reported to have ...

developing supernumerary limbs is a rare congenital condition that only a few cases have been documented. depending on the cause and developmental conditions, they may be single, multiple or complicated, and occur as a syndrome or associated with other anomalies. polymelia is defined as the presence of extra limb(s) which have been reported in human, mouse, chicken, calf and lamb. it seems that...

BACKGROUND Use of Botulinum toxin-A (BoNT-A) for treatment of upper limb spasticity in children with cerebral palsy has become routine clinical practice in many paediatric treatment centres worldwide. There is now high-level evidence that upper limb BoNT-A injection, in combination with occupational therapy, improves outcomes in children with cerebral palsy at both the body function/structure a...

OBJECTIVE To identify clinical and biomechanical parameters that influence swing-phase knee flexion and contribute to stiff-knee gait in individuals with spastic cerebral palsy (CP) and flexed-knee gait. DESIGN Retrospective analysis of clinical data and gait kinematics collected from 2010 to 2013. SETTING Motion and gait analysis laboratory at a children's hospital. PARTICIPANTS Individu...