Project description:Unilateral focal neuromyotonia has been rarely reported in fingers or extraocular muscles. We report a case of segmental neuromyotonia in a 20-year-old boy who presented to us with intermittent tightness in right upper limb. Electromyography revealed myokymic and neuromyotonic discharges in proximal as well as distal muscles of the right upper limb. Patient's symptoms responded well to phenytoin therapy. Such an atypical involvement of two contiguous areas of a single limb in neuromyotonia has not been reported previously. Awareness of such an atypical presentation of the disease can be important in timely diagnosis and treatment of a patient.
Project description:This article describes the clinical and electromyographic findings of neuromyotonia in a 19-month-old male crossbred Quarter Horse that presented with stiffness and muscle asymmetry in the hind limbs as well as sacrococcygeal, paravertebral, and gluteal myokymia. An electromyographic study showed spontaneous continuous muscle fiber activity with high-frequency discharges, fibrillations, positive sharp waves, fasciculation potentials, and complex repetitive discharges. Histological examination of the gluteal muscle showed a mixed neurogenic and myopathic pattern. The findings are consistent with neuromyotonia.
Project description:BackgroundOcular neuromyotonia (ONM) is characterized by episodic diplopia, which is usually triggered by prolonged eccentric gaze of the affected extraocular muscles. The spell is characterized by involuntary, occasionally painful, sustained contraction of one or more extraocular muscles innervated by the oculomotor, trochlear, or abducens nerve. ONM usually occurs as a late consequence of radiotherapy around the parasellar area, although idiopathic cases have been reported. Most cases are unilateral; however, bilateral ONM has occasionally been described.Case presentationA 60-year-old woman presented with a 4-month history of episodic, painful, horizontal binocular diplopia. She underwent external beam radiotherapy to the skull base for treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. The tumor was well controlled. General neurological examination findings were unremarkable. Neuro-ophthalmic examination revealed normal visual acuity, visual fields, pupils, and fundi. Ocular alignment showed orthotropia with normal ocular motility. Myasthenic eyelid signs were absent. However, she developed episodes of involuntary sustained contraction of the medial rectus muscle following prolonged eccentric gaze toward the affected medial rectus muscle, which resulted in esotropia upon returning to the primary position. The esotropic episodes spontaneously resolved after approximately 2 min. These spells affected both medial rectus muscles. Both pupils remained normal throughout the examination. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed neither brain parenchyma/brain stem lesions nor tumor recurrence. Her symptoms were successfully treated with carbamazepine.ConclusionsEpisodic esotropia in the adducting eye following prolonged horizontal eccentric gaze is a significant characteristic of ONM affecting the bilateral medial rectus muscles (i.e., bilateral oculomotor ONM). In spite of its extreme rarity, ONM should be considered as a differential diagnosis of episodic diplopia, especially in patients with a history of radiotherapy around the parasellar area. Careful examination with prolonged eccentric gaze should be performed to achieve a correct diagnosis and avoid an extensive unnecessary workup.
Project description:ImportanceAcquired neuromyotonia is increasingly recognized as an autoimmune disorder, frequently associated with antibodies against voltage-gated potassium channel complex proteins.We present a case of acquired neuromyotonia as the heralding symptom of recurrent thymoma in a patient with myasthenia gravis.ObservationsA report of a single case of a 53-year-old man with myasthenia gravis and a prior thymectomy presenting with 2 months of diffuse, involuntary muscle twitching in the absence of myasthenic symptoms, electrophysiologically confirmed to be neuromyotonia. Further evaluation revealed the recurrence of malignant thymoma, accompanied by refractory arrhythmia. Serologic and cerebrospinal fluid testing confirmed the presence of antibodies directed against 2 voltage-gated potassium channel–associated proteins: LGI1 and Caspr2.Conclusions and relevanceThis case highlights the overlap of myasthenia, neuromyotonia, and thymoma, emphasizing the importance of appropriate tumor screening in the presence of either of the former 2 conditions.
Project description:Ocular neuromyotonia (ONM) is a neuro-ophthalmic disorder characterized by episodic diplopia caused by contraction of one or more ocular muscles due to spontaneous excitation of the respective ocular motor nerve. We report a patient whose ocular neuromyotonia arose in the setting of a subacute demyelinating polyneuropathy consistent with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) and subsequently resolved following the initiation of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) for her neuropathy. Our patient provides additional evidence towards the role of demyelination and ephaptic neurotransmission in ocular neuromyotonia and also represents the first reported case of ocular neuromyotonia associated with a systemic neurological condition.
Project description:MotivationAssemblies of next-generation sequencing (NGS) data, although accurate, still contain a substantial number of errors that need to be corrected after the assembly process. We develop SEQuel, a tool that corrects errors (i.e. insertions, deletions and substitution errors) in the assembled contigs. Fundamental to the algorithm behind SEQuel is the positional de Bruijn graph, a graph structure that models k-mers within reads while incorporating the approximate positions of reads into the model.ResultsSEQuel reduced the number of small insertions and deletions in the assemblies of standard multi-cell Escherichia coli data by almost half, and corrected between 30% and 94% of the substitution errors. Further, we show SEQuel is imperative to improving single-cell assembly, which is inherently more challenging due to higher error rates and non-uniform coverage; over half of the small indels, and substitution errors in the single-cell assemblies were corrected. We apply SEQuel to the recently assembled Deltaproteobacterium SAR324 genome, which is the first bacterial genome with a comprehensive single-cell genome assembly, and make over 800 changes (insertions, deletions and substitutions) to refine this assembly.AvailabilitySEQuel can be used as a post-processing step in combination with any NGS assembler and is freely available at http://bix.ucsd.edu/SEQuel/.
Project description:BackgroundOcular neuromyotonia (ONM) is a rare ocular motility disorder characterized by involuntary paroxysmal extraocular muscle contraction and is caused by radiation therapy, vascular compression, and inflammatory disease. This study includes a rare case of ONM caused by a recurrent meningioma.Case descriptionA 56-year-old man presented with diplopia due to the right oculomotor nerve palsy caused by a sphenoidal atypical meningioma, with improved symptoms after initial surgery. During the next 7 years, he underwent local radiation therapy, second surgery, and Gamma Knife radiosurgery to control the tumor's repetitive recurrence around the right anterior clinoid process. After these treatments, residual tumor was controlled for the next 3 years. However, 3 months after his last visit, he started to suffer from the right ONM and visual disturbance. The magnetic resonance imaging results revealed a rapid growth of the posterior part of the residual tumor, involving the right oculomotor nerve. The third tumor resection was performed to prevent further aggravation of the symptoms. Decompression of the right oculomotor nerve was achieved, and ONM disappeared immediately after surgery.ConclusionIf nerve compression by the tumor is clearly indicated with the neuroradiological assessment, surgical intervention is the treatment of choice to improve ONM.
Project description:ObjectiveTo report clinical and immunological investigations of contactin-associated protein-like 2 (Caspr2), an autoantigen of encephalitis and peripheral nerve hyperexcitability (PNH) previously attributed to voltage-gated potassium channels (VGKC).MethodsClinical analysis was performed on patients with encephalitis, PNH, or both. Immunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry were used to identify the antigen and to develop an assay with Caspr2-expressing cells. Immunoabsorption with Caspr2 and comparative immunostaining of brain and peripheral nerve of wild-type and Caspr2-null mice were used to assess antibody specificity.ResultsUsing Caspr2-expressing cells, antibodies were identified in 8 patients but not in 140 patients with several types of autoimmune or viral encephalitis, PNH, or mutations of the Caspr2-encoding gene. Patients' antibodies reacted with brain and peripheral nerve in a pattern that colocalized with Caspr2. This reactivity was abrogated after immunoabsorption with Caspr2 and was absent in tissues from Caspr2-null mice. Of the 8 patients with Caspr2 antibodies, 7 had encephalopathy or seizures, 5 neuropathy or PNH, and 1 isolated PNH. Three patients also had myasthenia gravis, bulbar weakness, or symptoms that initially suggested motor neuron disease. None of the patients had active cancer; 7 responded to immunotherapy and were healthy or only mildly disabled at last follow-up (median, 8 months; range, 6-84 months).InterpretationCaspr2 is an autoantigen of encephalitis and PNH previously attributed to VGKC antibodies. The occurrence of other autoantibodies may result in a complex syndrome that at presentation could be mistaken for a motor neuron disorder. Recognition of this disorder is important, because it responds to immunotherapy.
Project description:BackgroundAlthough high-throughput sequencers (HTS) have largely displaced their Sanger counterparts, the short read lengths and high error rates of most platforms constrain their utility for amplicon sequencing. The present study tests the capacity of single molecule, real-time (SMRT) sequencing implemented on the SEQUEL platform to overcome these limitations, employing 658 bp amplicons of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I gene as a model system.ResultsBy examining templates from more than 5000 species and 20,000 specimens, the performance of SMRT sequencing was tested with amplicons showing wide variation in GC composition and varied sequence attributes. SMRT and Sanger sequences were very similar, but SMRT sequencing provided more complete coverage, especially for amplicons with homopolymer tracts. Because it can characterize amplicon pools from 10,000 DNA extracts in a single run, the SEQUEL can reduce greatly reduce sequencing costs in comparison to first (Sanger) and second generation platforms (Illumina, Ion).ConclusionsSMRT analysis generates high-fidelity sequences from amplicons with varying GC content and is resilient to homopolymer tracts. Analytical costs are low, substantially less than those for first or second generation sequencers. When implemented on the SEQUEL platform, SMRT analysis enables massive amplicon characterization because each instrument can recover sequences from more than 5 million DNA extracts a year.