Gabapentin is effective in reducing hot flash frequency and severity in postmenopausal women.

Some newer antidepressants and gabapentin, within 4 weeks of therapy initiation, decrease hot flashes more than placebo.

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BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:Free water in the posterior substantia nigra obtained from a bi-tensor diffusion MR imaging model has been shown to significantly increase over 1-and 4-year periods in patients with early-stage idiopathic Parkinson disease compared with healthy controls, which suggests that posterior substantia nigra free water may be an idiopathic Parkinson disease progression biomarker. Due to the known temporal posterior-to-anterior substantia nigra degeneration in idiopathic Parkinson disease, we assessed longitudinal changes in free water in both the posterior and anterior substantia nigra in patients with later-stage idiopathic Parkinson disease and age-matched healthy controls for comparison.

Although a variety of interventions are shown to be helpful in improving sleep in menopause, there is a need for well-designed head-to-head trials with uniform outcome measures.

The author describes six cases in which gabapentin treatment reduced the frequency of hot flashes. In addition, gabapentin treatment enhanced the frequency of hypothermic episodes in a separate patient with known hypothalamic dysfunction. Gabapentin may act directly upon temperature regulatory centers.

Background Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized in part by the progressive accumulation of iron within the substantia nigra (SN); however, its spatial and temporal dynamics remain relatively poorly understood. Objectives The objective of this study was to investigate spatial patterns and temporal evolution of SN iron accumulation in PD. Methods A total of 18 PD patients (mean disease duration = 6.2 years) receiving dopaminergic therapy and 16 healthy controls were scanned with 3T MRI at baseline and 3 years later using quantitative susceptibility mapping, an indirect marker of iron content. Iron was assessed separately in the posterior SN and anterior SN at the ventral and dorsal levels of the SN. The results were corrected for the false discovery rate. Results A significant group effect was found for the ventral posterior SN (P < .001) and anterior SN (P = .042) quantitative susceptibility mapping as well as significant group x time interaction effects (P = .02 and P = .043, respectively). In addition, a significant intragroup change during 3 years of follow‐up was found only in the ventral posterior SN of PD (P = .012), but not healthy controls. No significant effects were detected for any dorsal SN measures. No associations were identified with clinical measures. Conclusions We found both cross‐sectional and longitudinal SN iron changes to be confined to its more ventral location in PD. Because pathology studies also show the ventral SN to degenerate early and to the greatest extent in PD, the assessment of iron levels by quantitative susceptibility mapping in this area may potentially represent a disease progression biomarker in PD. © 2019 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society