Isokinetic strength of knee extension and flexion was measured at two speeds of movement in 23 patients with Parkinson’s disease, to clarify whether muscle weakness is inherent to the disease. To counteract normal variation among subjects, we selected patients with symptoms completely or largely confined to one side and compared sides for each patient. The affected side was weaker than the other in both slow and fast movements early in the disease. In more advanced disease, the difference between sides diminished at the slow speed but remained significant at the faster speed. These observations suggest that weakness is inherent to Parkinson’s disease and influenced by movement speed.
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is a multisystem autoimmune disease affecting millions of people worldwide. It can affect any organ systems of the body. However, all systems may not be involved initially rather than they may be affected gradually, sometimes over years. Diagnosis depends on characteristic clinical features and laboratory test results. Some features such as skin rash, joint symptoms and oral ulcers are common in SLE. But initial presentation of many patients is unusual because either they do not have these common features of the disease or the presentation mimics other illnesses. As a result, delayed diagnosis and misdiagnosis are common. Therefore, high index of initial suspicion of SLE is critical. In clinical practice, SLE should be suspected in any patient presenting with an unexplained disease process involving two or more organ systems. To make a diagnosis in an unusual presentation, thorough clinical evaluation with details history of both present and past illnesses as well as laboratory tests for SLE should be performed. Usually primary-care physicians first evaluate SLE patients; but there is no single article, where all the information on when to suspect SLE in an unusual presentation, is available in an integrated form. In this article, a list of conditions, when SLE should be suspected in an unusual presentation, has been given and some relatively common areas with diagnostic challenges of SLE have been briefly described. To prepare this manuscript, most articles have been identified through 'Pubmed' search using keywords-atypical/ unusual presentation of SLE, case reports on SLE, gastrointestinal manifestations of SLE, neuropsychiatric SLE, diagnostic challenges with SLE, etc. Selected most articles are from currently medline-indexed journals.
Hemoptysis is a common symptom. Although initial diagnostic workup, including a chest radiograph, often gives a clue to the cause, it provides no diagnostic hints in 3.0-42.2% of episodes of hemoptysis. To describe those cases with no diagnostic hints at initial investigations, experts have used different terms, including unexplained hemoptysis, idiopathic hemoptysis, cryptogenic hemoptysis and hemoptysis with normal chest radiographs. As hemoptysis is a common symptom of bronchogenic carcinoma, there is a concern of having underlying malignancy. Physicians value high-resolution computed tomography and fiberoptic bronchoscopy as the next investigations to establish diagnosis. These investigations however are expensive and nonspecific results are common in those cases of hemoptysis where initial diagnostic workup gives no clues to the cause. As a result, controversies exist with regard to their use. In this article, the author has proposed diagnostic approaches to evaluate those cases of hemoptysis with no diagnostic hints at initial investigation, after extensive review of published articles related to the case scenario.
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