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IntroductionExtrapyramidal deficits are poorly characterised in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) despite their contribution to functional disability, increased fall risk and their quality-of-life implications. Given the concomitant pyramidal and cerebellar degeneration in ALS, the clinical assessment of extrapyramidal features is particularly challenging.ObjectiveThe comprehensive characterisation of postural instability in ALS using standardised clinical assessments, gait analyses and computational neuroimaging tools in a prospective study design.MethodsParameters of gait initiation in the anticipatory postural adjustment phase (APA) and execution phase (EP) were evaluated in ALS patients with and without postural instability and healthy controls. Clinical and gait analysis parameters were interpreted in the context of brain imaging findings.ResultsALS patients with postural instability exhibit impaired gait initiation with an altered APA phase, poor dynamic postural control and significantly decreased braking index. Consistent with their clinical profile, “unsteady” ALS patients have reduced caudate and brain stem volumes compared to “steady” ALS patients.InterpretationOur findings highlight that the ALS functional rating scale (ALSFRS-r) does not account for extrapyramidal deficits, which are major contributors to gait impairment in a subset of ALS patients. Basal ganglia degeneration in ALS does not only contribute to cognitive and behavioural deficits, but also adds to the heterogeneity of motor disability.

In the present study, we examined the potential symptomatic and/or disease-modifying effects of monthly bee venom injections compared to placebo in moderatly affected Parkinson disease patients. We conducted a prospective, randomized double-blind study in 40 Parkinson disease patients at Hoehn & Yahr stages 1.5 to 3 who were either assigned to monthly bee venom injections or equivalent volumes of saline (treatment/placebo group: n = 20/20). The primary objective of this study was to assess a potential symptomatic effect of s.c. bee venom injections (100 μg) compared to placebo 11 months after initiation of therapy on United Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) III scores in the « off » condition pre-and post-injection at a 60 minute interval. Secondary objectives included the evolution of UPDRS III scores over the study period and [123I]-FP-CIT scans to evaluate disease progression. Finally, safety was assessed by monitoring specific IgE against bee venom and skin tests when necessary. After an 11 month period of monthly administration, bee venom did not significantly decrease UPDRS III scores in the « off » condition. Also, UPDRS III scores over the study course, and nuclear imaging, did not differ significantly between treatment groups. Four patients were excluded during the trial due to positive skin tests but no systemic allergic reaction was recorded. After an initial increase, specific IgE against bee venom decreased in all patients completing the trial. This study did not evidence any clear symptomatic or disease-modifying effects of monthly bee venom injections over an 11 month period compared to placebo using a standard bee venom allergy desensitization protocol in Parkinson disease patients. However, bee venom administration appeared safe in non-allergic subjects. Thus, we suggest that higher administration frequency and possibly higher individual doses of bee venom may reveal its potency in treating Parkinson disease. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01341431.

The Natural History and Neuroprotection in Parkinson Plus Syndromes (NNIPPS) study was a large phase III randomized placebo-controlled trial of riluzole in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP, n = 362) and Multiple System Atrophy (MSA, n = 398). To assess disease severity and progression, we constructed and validated a new clinical rating scale as an ancillary study. Patients were assessed at entry and 6-montly for up to 3 years. Evaluation of the scale's psychometric properties included reliability (n = 116), validity (n = 760), and responsiveness (n = 642). Among the 85 items of the initial scale, factor analysis revealed 83 items contributing to 15 clinically relevant dimensions, including Activity of daily Living/Mobility, Axial bradykinesia, Limb bradykinesia, Rigidity, Oculomotor, Cerebellar, Bulbar/Pseudo-bulbar, Mental, Orthostatic, Urinary, Limb dystonia, Axial dystonia, Pyramidal, Myoclonus and Tremor. All but the Pyramidal dimension demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach α ≥ 0.70). Inter-rater reliability was high for the total score (Intra-class coefficient = 0.94) and 9 dimensions (Intra-class coefficient = 0.80-0.93), and moderate (Intra-class coefficient = 0.54-0.77) for 6. Correlations of the total score with other clinical measures of severity were good (rho ≥ 0.70). The total score was significantly and linearly related to survival (p<0.0001). Responsiveness expressed as the Standardized Response Mean was high for the total score slope of change (SRM = 1.10), though higher in PSP (SRM = 1.25) than in MSA (SRM = 1.0), indicating a more rapid progression of PSP. The slope of change was constant with increasing disease severity demonstrating good linearity of the scale throughout disease stages. Although MSA and PSP differed quantitatively on the total score at entry and on rate of progression, the relative contribution of clinical dimensions to overall severity and progression was similar. The NNIPPS-PPS has suitable validity, is reliable and sensitive, and therefore is appropriate for use in clinical studies with PSP or MSA. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00211224.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a life-threatening neurodegenerative disease involving upper and lower motor neurons loss. Clinical features are highly variable among patients and there are currently few known disease-modifying factors underlying this heterogeneity. Serotonin is involved in a range of functions altered in ALS, including motor neuron excitability and energy metabolism. However, whether serotoninergic activity represents a disease modifier of ALS natural history remains unknown. Platelet and plasma unconjugated concentrations of serotonin and plasma 5-HIAA, the major serotonin metabolite, levels were measured using HPLC with coulometric detection in a cohort of 85 patients with ALS all followed-up until death and compared to a control group of 29 subjects. Platelet serotonin levels were significantly decreased in ALS patients. Platelet serotonin levels did not correlate with disease duration but were positively correlated with survival of the patients. Univariate Cox model analysis showed a 57% decreased risk of death for patients with platelet serotonin levels in the normal range relative to patients with abnormally low platelet serotonin (p = 0.0195). This protective effect remained significant after adjustment with age, gender or site of onset in multivariate analysis. Plasma unconjugated serotonin and 5-HIAA levels were unchanged in ALS patients compared to controls and did not correlate with clinical parameters. The positive correlation between platelet serotonin levels and survival strongly suggests that serotonin influences the course of ALS disease.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disorder causing a progressive motor weakness of all voluntary muscles, whose progression challenges communication modalities such as handwriting or speech. The current study investigated whether ALS subjects can use Eye-On-Line (EOL), a novel eye-operated communication device allowing, after training, to voluntarily control smooth-pursuit eye-movements (SPEM) so as to eye-write in cursive. To that aim, ALS participants ( = 12) with preserved eye-movements but impaired handwriting were trained during six on-site visits. The primary outcome of the study was the recognition of eye-written digits (0-9) from ALS and healthy control subjects by naïve \"readers.\" Changes in oculomotor performance and the safety of EOL were also evaluated. At the end of the program, 69.4% of the eye-written digits from 11 ALS subjects were recognized by naïve readers, similar to the 67.3% found for eye-written digits from controls participants, with however, large inter-individual differences in both groups of \"writers.\" Training with EOL was associated with a transient fatigue leading one ALS subject to drop out the study at the fifth visit. Otherwise, itching eyes was the most common adverse event (3 subjects). This study shows that, despite the impact of ALS on the motor system, most ALS participants could improve their mastering of eye-movements, so as to produce recognizable eye-written digits, although the eye-traces sometimes needed smoothing to ease digit legibility from both ALS subjects and control participants. The capability to endogenously and voluntarily generate eye-traces using EOL brings a novel way to communicate for disabled individuals, allowing creative personal and emotional expression.

The diagnostic of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) remains based on clinical and neurophysiological observations. The actual delay between the onset of the symptoms and diagnosis is about 1 year, preventing early inclusion of patients into clinical trials and early care of the disease. Therefore, finding biomarkers with high sensitivity and specificity remains urgent. In our study, we looked for peptide biomarkers in plasma samples using reverse phase magnetic beads (C18 and C8) and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry analysis. From a set of ALS patients (n=30) and healthy age-matched controls (n=30), C18- or C8-SVM-based models for ALS diagnostic were constructed on the base of the minimum of the most discriminant peaks. These two SVM-based models end up in excellent separations between the 2 groups of patients (recognition capability overall classes > 97%) and classify blinded samples (10 ALS and 10 healthy age-matched controls) with very high sensitivities and specificities (>90%). Some of these discriminant peaks have been identified by Mass Spectrometry (MS) analyses and correspond to (or are fragments of) major plasma proteins, partly linked to the blood coagulation.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0158235.].

Null mutations in the progranulin gene (GRN, PGRN) were recently identified as the causal mechanism underlying frontotemporal dementia (FTD) with ubiquitin‐positive brain pathology linked to chromosome 17 (FTDU‐17). In a Belgian and French FTD series comprising 332 patients, we reported 13 PGRN null mutations which were mainly nonsense and frameshift mutations resulting in premature stop codons. Here we report in the same patient series three missense mutations of which two (c.743C>T, p.Pro248Leu and c.1294C>T, p.Arg432Cys) were predicted in silico to severely affect protein folding and/or processing leading to PGRN protein haploinsufficiency. In addition, we observed three sequence variations in the 5' regulatory region that might potentially affect PGRN transcription activity. Our findings extend the mutation spectrum in PGRN leading to loss of functional PGRN as the basis for FTD. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Background: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal adult-onset degenerative disease characterized by the loss of upper and lower motor neurons leading to progressive muscle atrophy and paralysis. The lack of molecular markers of the progression of disease is detrimental to clinical practice and therapeutic trials. Objective: This study was designed to identify gene expression changes in skeletal muscle that could reliably define the degree of disease severity. Methods: Gene expression profiles were obtained from the deltoid muscles of ALS patients and healthy subjects. Changes in differentially expressed genes were compared to the status of deltoid muscle disability, as determined by manual muscle testing, electrophysiology and the degree of myofiber atrophy. Functionally related genes were grouped by annotation analysis, and deltoid muscle injury was predicted using binary tree classifiers. Results: Two sets of 25 and 70 transcripts appeared differentially regulated exclusively in early and advanced states of deltoid muscle impairment, respectively. The expression of another set of 198 transcripts correlated with a composite score of muscle injury combining manual muscle testing and histological examination. From the totality of these expression changes, 155 transcripts distinguished advanced from early deltoid muscle impairment with 80% sensitivity and 100% specificity. Nine of these transcripts, known also to be regulated in ALS mouse and surgically denervated muscle, predicted the advanced disease status with 100% sensitivity and specificity. Conclusion: We provide robust gene expression changes that can be of practical use when monitoring ALS status and the effects of disease-modifying drugs.