Central and peripheral neurological changes in connective tissue diseases A clinical, electrophysiological and pathological study

Abstract

Neurological and psychiatric abnormalities are frequent complications of CTDs. There are wide variations in the range and acuity of these abnormalities as well as the existence of the disease occurrence from one place to another . Neurophysiological investigations had not been widely employed in the assessment of the CTDs patients, inspite they had been advocated as a sensitive measure of the neuropsycihatric changes. Screening of the nervous system remains necessary in the examination of patients with the CTDs. Many abnormalities had been discovered in those patients inspite they had clinically no features suggesting them.

In our study 55 patients from Alexandria and 135 patients from Hannover with CTDs had been randomly selected •from those attending the Physical Medicine Department in Alexandria . and those attending the Neurology and clinical Neurophysiology Department in Hannover. Twenty control subjects had been included for the• quantitative evaluation of the results. Ten patients had been subjected for muscle biopsy to undergo the EM studies(transmission and scanning EM). Clinical ,psychological (MMSE),Iaboratory, electrophysiological and pathological studies had been included in the evaluation of those patients and the obtained results had been subjected to statistical analysis .