OBJECTIVE Research is scarce regarding the use of prosodic parameters in the expression of attitudes in Parkinson's disease (PD). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the parameters used in prosodic expression of attitudes in individuals with idiopathic PD and the effect of levodopa on these parameters. METHOD We studied the use of levodopa in 10 individuals with idiopathic PD during the...

S8 CONSULTANT SEPTEMBER 2008 (SUPPLEMENT) ABSTRACT: Dopamine receptor agonists have played an important role in antiparkinsonian therapy since the first ergoline derivative was introduced in 1974. The non-ergoline dopamine agonists, developed later to provide the benefits of the ergolines with fewer side effects, are currently used as both monotherapy and as adjunctive therapy to treat symptoms...

Usually, levodopa-induced dyskinesia does not remain unchanged throughout the day in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and varies according to the level of correction of PD symptomatology provided by the treatment. We observed two PD patients with unusual buccolingual masticatory movements which did not seem to fluctuate, either throughout the day during dopaminergic treatment or during a stand...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is an extra-pyramidal neurodegenerative disorder, in which alterations of the immune system are involved. Interleukin (IL)-15 stimulates cellular immune response and induces growth and differentiation of various immune cells. RANTES, promoting leukocyte infiltration to sites of inflammation, mediates the trafficking and homing of immune cells. To clarify the potential e...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the clinical features of the working memory (WM) in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and to test the effect of levodopa on WM. METHOD The paradigm was based on the 'n-back' tasks, which enables to study the level of executive demand (three levels of difficulty) and the domain of the information being processed (spatial items, faces and letters). The effect of levodopa w...

Levodopa-induced dyskinesias are disabling motor complications of long-term dopamine replacement in patients with Parkinson’s disease. In recent years, several alternative models have been proposed to explain the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying this hyperkinetic motor disorder. In particular, our group has shed new light on the role of the prefrontal cortex as a key site of interest, d...

BACKGROUND Motor fluctuations and dyskinesias can cause disability and reduce quality of life for patients with Parkinson disease (PD). OBJECTIVES To evaluate factors associated with the development of motor fluctuations and dyskinesias and to assess the sequence in which they occur in individual patients. DESIGN We performed a retrospective analysis of data from a randomized clinical trial...

Epilepsy is a common neurologic disorder affecting approximately 1% of the population. The prevalence of active epilepsy in Kerman,Iran is 7.87/1000 individuals. The past decade has brought many advances to the treatment of epilepsy, including many new pharmacological agents. Lamotrigine is one of the new antiepileptic drugs. Lamotrigine has many side effects; the most important of which are al...