Neurology® Clinical Practice 2010;75(Suppl 1):S2–S8 Improved understanding of the differential diagnosis and improved investigative techniques, particularly neuroimaging and serologic testing, have facilitated the diagnosis of patients with acute and subacute myelopathy and reduced the proportion of patients who are labeled as having “idiopathic transverse myelitis.” Additionally, these advance...

A healthy woman undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) developed acute transverse myelitis (ATM) following the use of Buserelin. ATM has a multifactorial etiology and may develop as a result of the activation of immune responses. Infectious agents have been postulated as possible triggers of an immune response (Sá, 2009). Gonadotropin-releasing agonists may have a similar role and trigger the ...

Case report. A 27-year-old Brazilian woman presented with a 7-month history of progressive pain, tingling, numbness, and weakness of the left upper limb, and paroxysmal dysesthesia affecting the left foot. On examination, there were erythematous, anesthetic patches of skin overlying the metacarpophalangeal joints and on the palmar surfaces of the hands (figure e-1 at Neurology.org/nn). There wa...

BACKGROUND Bacterial meningitis is rarely complicated by acute spinal cord involvement (eg, myelitis, ischemic infarction, spinal abscess, or epidural hemorrhage). In spinal cord dysfunction, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the imaging modality of choice. Still, MRI findings of myelitis due to bacterial meningitis in adults have not been reported. METHODS Spinal MRIs were obtained during ...

OBJECTIVE To minimize complement-mediated damage in acute relapses of neuromyelitis optica (NMO) by adding treatment with a complement inhibitor, purified C1-esterase inhibitor, to the current standard of care (high-dose glucocorticoids). METHOD We conducted an open-label phase 1b safety and proof-of-concept trial in 10 patients with NMO-immunoglobulin G seropositive NMO or NMO spectrum disea...

Eighteen adult patients presenting with acute transverse myelitis (ATM) were evaluated using magnetic resonance imaging. Only 7 had abnormal scans showing an area of increased signal intensity within the cord solely on T2 weighted images; T1 weighted images were normal. The MRI abnormality did not correlate with the cause of the transverse myelitis, the extent of maximum neurological deficit, o...

A case of Acute Transverse Myelitis (ATM) is presented. ATM is a rare disease in childhood. The diagnosis stems from the clinical presentation, cerebrospinal fluid findings, appearance of the spinal cord on imaging and ruling out differential diagnoses like Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) and Poliomyelitis. The proposed treatment is intravenous (IV) methyl prednisolone with variable chances of re...

PURPOSE To describe the MR characteristics that can distinguish idiopathic transverse myelitis from other intramedullary lesions. METHODS A total of 32 initial and follow-up MR studies in 17 patients with clinically proved transverse myelitis were reviewed retrospectively. The location, size, pattern, and segmental length of areas of hyperintensity were estimated on T2-weighted axial and sagi...