Please send me Dr. Spahr phone number or general email please. My mom
was a patient at University of Chicago and my Dad at Evanston Hospital.
Mom had liver disease and grandma had similar findings. Mom died young
at 62 years. She had a Liver Transplant.


Thank you.

Judith Richards wrote:
>
> Parkinsonian signs correlate with basal ganglia changes in cirrhosis
> patients
>
> WESTPORT, Sep 11, 2000 (Reuters Health) - Magnetic resonance imaging
> (MRI) and proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) reveal basal
> ganglia abnormalities in cirrhotic patients with parkinsonian signs,
> according to a report in the September issue of Gastroenterology.
>
> Previous reports of MRI and MRS abnormalities in patients with cirrhosis
> have not clearly been linked to neurologic or cognitive impairment, the
> authors explain. Moreover, parkinsonian signs have only occasionally
> been investigated in patients with hepatic encephalopathy due to
> cirrhosis.
>
> Dr. Laurent Spahr and colleagues, from University Hospital, in Geneva,
> Switzerland, conducted MRI and MRS studies on 19 patients with
> cirrhosis awaiting liver transplants and compared the results with the
> patients' parkinsonian signs, as measured by the Unified Parkinson's
> Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) and the Purdue Pegboard test.
>
> On MRI, occipital white matter and all basal ganglia tissue except
> thalamus exhibited significant signal hyperintensity in patients with
> cirrhosis
> and mild hepatic encephalopathy, the authors report.
>
> As previously seen in MRS studies of patients with cirrhosis, the
> myoinositol/creatine and choline/creatine ratios were decreased and the
> glutamine-glutamate/creatine ratio slightly increased in patients with
> mild
> hepatic encephalopathy, the investigators note.
>
> In these patients, MRI intensities in the pallidum, caudate, and putamen
> correlated positively with UPDRS scores, the report indicates.
> Similarly,
> there were correlations between MRS findings and either UPDRS scores
> or Purdue Pegboard scores. In three patients who were retested after
> successful liver transplantations, MRI signal alterations disappeared
> and
> MRS findings normalized.
>
> The authors conclude that the findings support "the view of clinically
> significant basal ganglia alterations in these patients."
>
> Gastroenterology 2000;119:774-781.
>   Copyright © 2000 Reuters Limited.
>
> --
> Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
> [log in to unmask]
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