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Introduction: Heart manifestations of Churg-Strauss syndrome (CSS) are varied. In the early stages of the disease, it is difficult to distinguish between lesions that are specific to CSS and those of other etiologies. The aim of our work was to compare the characteristics of patients with heart manifestations linked or not to Churg-Strauss syndrome., Material and Methods: We recorded all clinical symptoms of patients with CSS hospitalized between 1998 and 2008 in Burgundy, France, and determined the possible relationships between heart symptoms and CSS., Results: From a cohort of 31 patients, we found 20 with heart lesions. When heart lesions were present, we noted fewer initial symptoms of digestive disorders (p<0.05), lower levels of lung infiltrates and fewer anti-MPO pANCA (p<0.05). Heart lesions were linked to CSS in 75% of cases. Their patients were thus younger than those in the other cardiac patients (p<0.05), were more likely to have clinical manifestations of heart involvement at diagnosis, were less likely to have lung infiltrates on the X-ray at diagnosis and during flare-ups and less likely to have lung abnormalities on X-rays during flare-ups (p<0.05) and higher level of leucocytes and eosinophils at diagnosis., Conclusion: Heart lesions directly attributable to CSS are frequent, severe and probably underestimated. A specific physiopathology that is not mediated by ANCA seems to be involved in the genesis of CSS-related heart lesions.

We studied the kinematics of shoulder displacement during sit-to-stand and back-to-sit in 6 healthy elderly subjects and six elderly subjects with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease in order to elucidate the impact of Alzheimer's disease on motor planning and control processes. During sit-to-stand, Alzheimer's disease subjects reduced their forward displacement and started their upward displacement earlier than healthy elderly subjects. Furthermore, shoulder path curvatures were more pronounced for upward compared with downward displacement in healthy elderly group, in contrast with Alzheimer's disease group. Temporal analysis found that: 1) for both groups, profiles of velocity of sit-to-stand and back-to-sit showed two peaks corresponding respectively to forward/upward and to downward/backward displacements, 2) peaks of velocity were almost comparable between the two groups, 3) duration of sit-to-stand was shorter than duration of back-to-sit in the two groups and 4) duration of sit-to-stand and back-to-sit was shorter in Alzheimer's disease group than in healthy elderly group. However, dissimilarities were observed for transition and deceleration phases during sit-to-stand, and for acceleration and transition phases during back-to-sit, between the two groups. Interestingly, while sit-to-stand and back-to-sit differed in healthy elderly subjects during transition and deceleration phases, such a difference was not observed for Alzheimer's disease subjects. So, our study showed that invariant spatio-temporal movement parameters in the two groups differed, while non-invariant parameters did not, and suggests that higher level motor process of whole body motions are affected by Alzheimer's disease, while lower level motor features remain intact.

Intravascular malignant lymphomatosis (IML) is characterized by proliferation of malignant lymphoid B cells within the lumens of small vessels. Common symptoms include general weakness and central neurological and cutaneous signs. Only histopathological analysis can confirm the diagnosis. We report on a 69-year-old man hospitalized for general weakness, inflammatory syndrome, and hemophagocytic syndrome (HS). Our observation shows that histopathological signs may be observed on a muscular biopsy without clinical or biological signs of muscular involvement.