BACKGROUND To investigate the relationship between presenting clinical manifestations and imaging features of multisystem neuronal dysfunction in MSA patients, using (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography ((18)F-FDG PET). METHODS We studied 50 consecutive MSA patients with characteristic brain MRI findings of MSA, including 34 patients with early MSA-parkinsonian (MSA-P) and 16...

Background. Patients with multiple system atrophy (MSA), similarly to patients with alpha-synucleinopathies, can present with different sleep problems. We sought to analyze sleep problems in the two subtypes of the disease MSA cerebellar type (MSA-C) and MSA parkinsonian type (MSA-P), paying special attention to REM sleep disturbances and periodic limb movements (PLMs). Methods. In the study we...

The Babesia bovis merozoite surface antigen 2 (MSA-2) locus encodes four proteins, MSA-2a(1), -2a(2), -2b, and -2c. With the use of specific antibodies, each MSA-2 protein was shown to be expressed on the surface of live extracellular merozoites and coexpression on single merozoites was confirmed. Individual antisera against MSA-2a, MSA-2b, and MSA-2c significantly inhibited merozoite invasion ...

The purposes of this report is to describe the distribution of reported negative mood by place of residence focusing on proximity to metropolitan statistical areas (MSA's) as an alternative to the traditional urban versus rural residence variable using the 1991 National Health Interview Survey's Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (NHIS-HPDP) supplement. The self-report of negative mood com...

Multiple system atrophy (MSA) is a sporadic neurodegenerative disorder characterized by various combinations of autonomic dysfunction, cerbellar symptoms, parkinsonism and pyramidal signs. Although molecular mechanisms of MSA remain to be elucidated, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) may provide clues as to the susceptibility genes for MSA. Establishment of the natural history of MSA is es...

BACKGROUND Brain magnetic resonance (MR) imaging offers the potential for objective criteria in the differential diagnosis of multiple system atrophy with predominant parkinsonism (MSA-P) and Parkinson disease (PD), since it frequently shows characteristic abnormalities in patients with MSA-P and is believed to be normal in patients with PD. OBJECTIVE To determine concordance between clinical...

Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) is an NP-complete and important problem in bioinformatics. In this paper, we have proposed iterative alignment method using a Genetic Algorithm for Multiple Sequence Alignment, named TSGA-MSA. The steps in this algorithm are discussed in details and its performances on a set of benchmark datasets from the BAliBase 2. 0 are analysed. The experimental results, th...

Design optimization of cable-stayed bridges is a challenging optimization problem because a large number of variables is usually involved in the optimization process. For these structures the design variables are cross-sectional areas of the cables. In this study, an efficient metaheuristic algorithm namely, momentum search algorithm (MSA) is used to optimize the design of cable-stayed bridges....