Foreword
Elio Scarpini is a Professor of Neurology in the Department of Neurological Sciences of the University of Milan, IRCCS Fondazione Cà Granda, Ospedale Policlinico. His main interests include neurodegenerative disorders (Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration) and demyelinating diseases (multiple sclerosis). He is a member of the Executive Committee of the European Neurological Society (ENS), serves as a reviewer for several neurological journals and is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Neurology. Professor Scarpini is the author of more than 200 scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals and eight chapters in international volumes and has made more than 300 contributions to conferences.
E
uropean Neurological Review provides extensive reviews in the field of basic and clinical neurology, including current and future disease treatment options, with the aim of giving clinicians an overview of the main research topics as well as providing diagnostic and treatment advances in order to assist clinicians in daily practice.
The contents of this issue cover a wide spectrum of neurological diseases, starting with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which is the most common neurodegenerative disorder. AD represents a critical worldwide problem related to growing life expectancy and to the frequently needed human and monetary resources to improve the care of patients through the optimisation of diagnostic and therapeutic targets. An emerging topic in AD is the revision of diagnostic criteria, which strongly suggest the use of biological (cerebrospinal fluid [CSF]) and topographical markers (positron emission tomography [PET]) to improve diagnostic sensitivity and specificity. In this issue, an interesting overview of recent advances and perspectives in the field of molecular imaging in AD is provided as an update, together with a review on the role of primary care physicians in AD.
Two articles are dedicated to multiple sclerosis (MS). A point of debate in MS from theoretical and practical points of view is represented by the poor reliability of the principal outcome measures used to establish the clinical course of the disease and to test whether patients respond to treatment. In this issue there are two articles dealing with this problem: the first is focused on measuring disability progression with the MS Functional Composite, an integrative scale that can be added to routine neurological examination and to the currently used Extended Disability Status Scale (EDSS) to obtain a more informative patient profile; the second summarises the indications on the use of interferon beta-1β as a disease-modifying drug.
Several other neurological diseases are discussed in this issue, including guidelines for diagnosis and treatment approaches that can be used in the context of emergency neurology, with a particular focus on brain trauma. Suggestions for the therapy of tension-type headache based on the European Federation of Neurological Societies (EFNS) guidelines, which are potentially useful to both neurologists and general practitioners, are also given.
In addition, current and future therapeutic options for a quite rare but important as potentially treatable neuroperipheral disease, inflammatory polyradiculoneuropathy, are reviewed. Finally, elite fields such as drug-resistant epilepsy and paediatric neurometabolic diseases are not neglected, in order to be of help for clinical neurologists in daily practice.
European Neurological Review would like to thank everyone involved in this edition, especially the contributing authors for providing such insightful discussion. We are certain that this diverse selection of instructive and informative review articles will be of great interest and benefit to you, the reader. n
10
© TOUCH BRIEFINGS 2011
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76