Spinal chord

We present a case of a 3-year-old boy with neurodegeneration. Family history reveals Rendu-Osler-Weber disease. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the spinal cord and spinal angiography showed a spinal arteriovenous fistula with venous aneurysm, causing compression of the lumbar spinal cord. Embolisation of the fistula was executed, resulting in clinical improvement. A week after discharge he was readmitted with neurologic regression. A second MRI scan revealed an intraspinal epidural haematoma and increase in size of the aneurysm with several new arterial feeders leading to it...

During development, axon guidance receptors play a crucial role in regulating axons sensitivity to both attractive and repulsive cues. Indeed, activation of the guidance receptors is the first step of the signaling mechanisms allowing axon tips, the growth cones, to respond to the ligands. As such, the modulation of their availability at the cell surface is one of the mechanisms that participate in setting the growth cone sensitivity. We describe here a method to precisely visualize the spatio-temporal cell surface dynamics of an axon guidance receptor both in vitro and in vivo in the developing chick spinal cord...

Von Hippel-Lindau syndrome is an autosomal dominant inherited phacomatosis with a predisposition for the central nervous system and retina. There is variable expression with hemangioblastomas in the brain, medulla oblongata, spinal chord, renal carcinoma, pheochromocytoma, pancreatic cysts and islet cell tumors as well as tumors of the endolymphatic sac of the inner ear. Clinical symptoms occur first after an age of approximately 30 years. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the neuroaxis is indicated in all patients with a suspicion of von Hippel-Lindau syndrome...

BACKGROUND CONTEXT: Few accurate analyses of clinically useful vertebral anatomy have been conducted, and most have focused on thoracic idiopathic scoliosis. PURPOSE: To evaluate the different anatomic characteristics in scoliosis by disease type and level. STUDY DESIGN: Observational cohort study. PATIENT SAMPLE: Forty-eight patients with scoliosis were included in this study. OUTCOME MEASURES: Subjects underwent computed tomography (CT) of the whole spine...

INTRODUCTION: Occipitalization of the atlas is the most common malformation of the craniovertebral junction. It can be diagnosed on lateral teleradiography and its finding imposes screening for associated atlantoaxial instability. In case of instability, brisk movements of the cervical spine during surgery may result in compression and distortion of the spinal chord and vertebro-basilar vascular system. OBSERVATION: An 18 year-old female patient was referred to our department for facial dysmorphosis and extraction of the third molars...

OBJECTIVE: To discuss the correlation between the degree of cervical spinal cord compression and gender, age, height of intervertebral space and the abnormality curvature of cervical vertebrae. The multivariable linear regression was used to build the prediction model of cervical spinal cord compression. METHODS: One hundred and twenty patients with cervical spondylosis were divided into 4 groups according to the degree of spinal cord compression. To measure the sagittal diameter of spinal cord (a) and medulla-pons junction (M) in MRI individually, and then calculate the ratio of a/M; according to the ratio to evaluate the degree of cervical spinal cord compression...

OBJECTIVES: The use of selective antegrade cerebral perfusion (ACP) makes deep hypothermia nonessential for aortic arch replacement. Consequently, a growing tendency to increase the body temperature during circulatory arrest with ACP has recently been reported from various institutions. However, very little is known about the clinical effect of different modes of ACP (unilateral vs bilateral) on neurologic morbidity. Also, the safe limits of this approach for spinal chord and visceral organ protection are yet to be defined...

BACKGROUND: The use of thoracic endovascular aneurysm repair (TEVAR) is increasing. Similar to open repair, TEVAR carries a risk of spinal cord ischemia (SCI). We undertook a systematic review to determine whether preoperative cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) drainage reduces SCI. METHODS: PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and conference abstracts were searched using the keywords thoracic endovascular aortic repair, cerebrospinal fluid, spinal cord ischaemia, TEVAR, and aneurysm...

We report, a very unusual case of multilevel vertebral hydatidosis adjacent to the thoracolumbar junction, without concomitant chord compression. Two months after initiating oral antiparasite treatment, the patient underwent resection of the lesion using a posterior approach, medullary decompression, and a T11-L3 instrumented arthrodesis. Arthrodesis via the anterior approach was performed at a later stage. In addition to its diagnostic value, this case raises renewed discussion about single-level lesions given their rarity: their indication for preoperative medullary angiography, their indication for circumferential surgery, the timing of medical treatment, and the strategy to implement for the residual lesions...

Electroneurography (ENG) is a method of recording neural activity within nerves. Using nerve electrodes with multiple contacts the activation patterns of individual neuronal fascicles can be estimated by measuring the surface voltages induced by the intraneural activity. The information about neuronal activation can be used for functional electric stimulation (FES) of patients suffering from spinal chord injury, or to control a robotic prosthetic limb of an amputee. However, the ENG signal estimation is a severely ill-posed inverse problem due to uncertainties in the model, low resolution due to limitations of the data, geometric constraints and the difficulty in separating the signal from biological and exogenous noise...

Partial differential equations have been successfully used for fibre tractography and for mapping connectivity indices in the brain. However, the current implementation of methods which require 3D orientation to be tracked can suffer from serious shortcomings when invariance to 3D rotation is desired. In this paper we focus on the 3D stochastic completion field and introduce a new methodology to solve the underlying PDE in a manner that achieves rotation invariance. The key idea is to use spherical harmonics to solve the Fokker-Planck equation representing the evolution of the probability density function of a 3D directional random walk...

STUDY DESIGN: An analysis of computed tomography images of the spine in adult Japanese patients. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the variation of the position of the aorta relative to a spine with a thoracic kyphotic angle and to verify the safety margin for transpedicular screw fixation. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: Recent studies have suggested that the aorta is positioned more laterally and posteriorly in patients with idiopathic scoliosis than in normal patients; however, variation of the position of the aorta in thoracic sagittal alignment has not been performed...

BACKGROUND: February 2009: The authors are aware of unpublished trial data for Gabapentin which could affect the results of this review. This information together with that from trials published since 2005, will be considered when this review is updated in 2009.Anticonvulsant drugs have been used in the management of pain since the 1960s. The clinical impression is that they are useful for chronic neuropathic pain, especially when the pain is lancinating or burning. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the analgesic effectiveness and adverse effects of gabapentin for pain management in clinical practice...

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: Injury to the spinal chord at the C5 level results in a severe handicap to the patient because of a loss of active motion of the wrist and hand. Selected surgical procedures can effectively restore active extension of the wrist and provide conditions for some vital pinching and gripping abilities. The deltoid muscle also has a potential for restoration of upper limb function, because its posterior portion can be used to restore elbow extension. The aim of this clinical retrospective study was to describe and evaluate the techniques used to improve the quality of life in patients with spinal chord lesions at the C5 level...

As much as one third of patients with arterial hypertension are treatment refractory as they do not reach sufficient blood pressure control despite antihypertensive combination therapy of significant duration. In patients with therapy-resistant hypertension, the kidneys play a central role as activator of the sympathetic nervous system. Sympathetic nervous activation via efferent nerve fibers lying in the adventitia of the renal arteries leads to increased Na(+) reabsorption, increased renin secretion and reduction of renal plasma flow...

Proteoglycans carrying chondroitin sulfate side chains have been shown to fulfill important biological functions in development, disease, and signaling. One area of considerable interest is the functional importance of chondroitin sulfates as inhibitors of the regeneration of axonal projections in the mammalian central nervous system. In animal models of spinal cord injury, injections of the enzyme Chondroitinase ABC from the bacterium Proteus vulgaris into the lesion site leads to degradation of chondroitin sulfates, and promotes axonal regeneration and significant functional recovery...

Traumatic aortic rupture is a devastating injury that is difficult to manage because of the need to approach aortic repair, often in concert with management of complex associated injuries to nonvascular organ systems. Traditional open repair, while effective in the long-term, is associated with a periprocedural mortality between 10% and 20%, along with a 5% risk of stroke and up to a 5% risk of spinal chord ischemia. The advent of endovascular stent graft repair has allowed single centers to cut periprocedural mortality in half and decrease the risk of major neurologic events to <2%...

During and after gastrulation, the neural axis in vertebrates is patterned along the antero-posterior axis by the combined activity of signaling factors secreted in the neural ectoderm and the underlying mesoderm. These signals divide the neural axis into four major divisions: the forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain and spinal chord. Among the signals that pattern the neural axis, Wnts play a prominent role and many patterning genes have been found to be direct Wnt/beta-catenin target genes, including several homeobox domain-containing transcription factors...

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Vitamin C (VC) is a crucial antioxidant in the brain. To assess whether different brain regions vary in their sensitivity to oxidative stress induced by VC depletion, we used the gulonolactone oxidase (gulo) knockout mouse. This mouse, like humans, cannot synthesize VC and thus its tissue VC levels can be varied by dietary VC intake. Gulo knockout mice were fed drinking water containing standard (0.33g/L), low (0.033g/L) or zero (0g/L) VC supplementation levels. After 4weeks, mice were sacrificed and different brain regions removed for assay of VC and malondialdehyde, a marker of lipid peroxidation...