Hallervorden-Spatz syndrome is a disorder characterized by dystonia, parkinsonism, and iron accumulation in the brain. The disease is caused by mutations in gene encoding pantothenate kinase 2 (PANK2) and patients have pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration. We present an 8-year-old boy with progressive muscle dystonia, neuroregression, frequent fall and multiple injur...

Dystonia may be classified by age of onset (childhood, adolescence, adult onset), body distribution of the abnormal movements (focal, segmental, unilateral, multifocal and generalized) and etiology (idiopathic and symptomatic). We studied 76 patients with idiopathic dystonia among 122 cases of dystonic syndrome (62.3% of the total). There were 48 female and 28 male patients. Adult-onset focal d...

BACKGROUND There is an ongoing debate whether essential tremor (ET) represents a monosymptomatic disorder or other neurologic symptoms are compatible with the diagnosis of ET. Many patients with clinically definite ET develop dystonia. It remains unknown whether tremor associated with dystonia represent a subtype of ET. We hypothesized that ET with dystonia represents a distinct subtype of ET. ...

OBJECTIVES To assign an accurate diagnosis to patients with dystonia based on the presence of sustained levodopa responsiveness and to determine whether motor fluctuations occur in patients with dystonia who are withheld from levodopa. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients with generalized dystonia who responded to treatment in the 1970s with levodopa/carbidopa were surveyed by phone and then examine...

Literary reports on dystonia date back to post-Medieval times. Medical reports are instead more recent. We review here the early descriptions and the historical establishment of a consensus on the clinical phenomenology and the diagnostic features of dystonia syndromes. Lumping and splitting exercises have characterized this area of knowledge, and it remains largely unclear how many dystonia ty...

Clinical manifestation of dystonia features involuntary muscle contraction or spasm resulting in postural and movement disorders. Depending on the distribution and spreading pattern of dystonia, four patterns have been described, including focal, segmental, multifocal and generalized dystonia. Dystonia can be seen as one of additional clinical features in a more severe neurologic condition. Mos...

Adult-onset focal dystonia in the upper limbs is well characterized whereas such dystonia has been rarely reported in the lower limbs, especially in proximal parts. When such focal dystonia occurs in an athlete it is often wrongly attributed to an orthopedic disorder. We present five cases, three female and two male with mean age of 44.6+/-10.43 years, mean age at onset of 37.4+/-10.33 years, a...

dysphagia with fluspirilene, although four episodes of dystonia and one dyskinetic reaction have occurred since 1975. Acute dystonic reactions are well recognised with neuroleptic drugs,' but acute dystonic dysphagia has only recently been reported; NewtonJohn described the condition in two patients, the causal drug probably being metoclopramide, although prochlorperazine was implicated in one....

Psychogenic dystonia is a challenging entity to diagnose and treat because little is known about its pathophysiology. We describe two cases of psychogenic dystonia who underwent deep brain stimulation when thought to have organic dystonia. The intraoperative microelectrode recordings in globus pallidus internus were retrospectively compared with those of five patients with known DYT1 dystonia u...

Oromandibular dystonia consists of prolonged spasms of contraction of the muscles of the mouth and jaw. Primary idiopathic forms and secondary forms exist. Secondary dystonia develops due to environmental factors; some cases of cranial dystonia after dental procedure have been reported, but the causal relationship between these procedures and dystonia remains unclear. Traumatic situations in th...