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Decrease in the activity of methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) increases the level of homocysteine. MTHFR C677T gene polymorphism has been reported as a well-known cause of elevated homocysteine level associated with cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST). A 34-year-old male was admitted with severe headache after generalized seizure. Brain magnetic resonance venography showed thrombus in superior sagittal sinus. In the investigation of risk factors, a slight increase in homocysteine caused by MTHFR C677T heterozygous mutation is presumed to be the cause of CVST.

Background/aims The induction and recurrence of syncope is a concerning situation that could be unpredicted in the vasovagal syncope (VVS). We investigated a simple predictor for the induced and recurrent VVS during Head-Up table-tilt Test (HUT) and clinically follow-up. Methods The 143 consecutive patients with VVS (age 31 ± 19 years, 33 male) who referred by a cardiologist or neurologist and had undergone an echocardiogram, HUT, and a treadmill exercise test (TMT) were recruited and clinically follow-up. Patients were divided into two groups based on the result of HUT and TMT. The data was analyzed and compared between VVS patients and control 141 patients without VVS who were enrolled in the same study period (age 40 ± 5 years, 117 male). Results The heart rate recovery (HRR), recovery systolic blood pressure (RecSBP), recovery diastolic blood pressure (RecDBP), HRR/RecSBP and HRR/RecDBP were significantly different between controls and VVS during the TMT. Within VVS, even if, baseline characteristics were similar between negative and positive HUT (n = 92 vs. n = 51). HRR (31 ± 10 vs. 35 ± 10), HRR/RecSBP (0.24 ± 0.09 vs. 0.28 ± 0.09) and HRR/RecDBP (0.49 ± 0.18 vs. 0.58 ± 0.19) were significantly different between negative and positive HUT results. Especially, HRR/RecSBP and HRR/RecDBP were significantly correlated with induced syncope with a sensitivity and specificity ([60%, 83%] cut-off, 0.31; [72%, 80%] cut-off, 0.63). In the Cox regression, HRR/ RecDBP were significantly associated with recurrence of VVS with hazard ratio of 3.29 (confidence interval, 0.95 to 11.3; p = 0.049). Conclusion HRR/RecDBP may be a useful predictor for induction during HUT and recurrence during follow-up in the VVS.

Forced thinking (FT) is a rare epileptic phenomenon which is usually seen in patients with frontal lobe epilepsy. We report a rare case of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy presenting FT as simple partial status epilepticus. A 50-year-old woman with left hippocampal sclerosis developed a prolonged episode of continuous FT for five days after she experienced a clustering of complex partial seizures during the period of preoperative video-electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring. The EEG demonstrated continuous focal ictal discharges in the left foramen ovale electrodes. Positron emission tomography showed focal glucose hypermetabolism in the left mesial temporal region. This case indicates that the anatomical substrate for the development of FT is located in the mesial temporal region as well as the frontal lobe, and prolonged FT can occur as a seizure manifestation. (2011;1:77-80)

Summary Purpose: To evaluate the long-term efficacy and tolerability of topiramate (TPM) as add-on therapy in patients with refractory partial epilepsy. Methods: This is a retrospective, single-center, long-term observational study. Patients fulfilling the criteria of medical intractability proposed by Berg et al. were entered into the study if they were newly prescribed TPM as add-on therapy between January 2000 and June 2002. The usual starting dosage of TPM was 50 mg/day and optimal-dose adjustments were made according to individual clinical responses. Efficacy and tolerability were analyzed every year during 5-year follow-up in the “intention-to-treat (ITT) population.” Retention rate was estimated by Kaplan-Meyer analysis. Results: A total of 125 patients were included in the study and 107 patients (85.6%) were followed for 5 years. Retention rate was 87.2% at 1 year and 64% at 5 years. At the end of 5 years, the median seizure frequency reduction rate was 69.0% and responder rate was 43.2% in the ITT population. Cumulative seizure-free rate (SFR) was 30.4% and the terminal 1-year SFR was 12.8% in the ITT population (20.0% in completers) at 5-year follow-up. Adverse events (AEs) occurred in 39.2% of patients, including significant AEs leading to antiepileptic drug (AED) withdrawal in 14.4%. The most common AEs were anorexia (16.0%), weight loss (10.4%), and gastrointestinal symptoms (8.8%). Concomitant AEDs were reduced in 25.0% of the completers. Discussion: Low-dose and slow-dose escalation of TPM in add-on therapy for patients with refractory partial epilepsy is effective and well tolerated in long-term, individualized clinical practice.

For browsing, searching, and manipulating video documents, an indexing technique to describe video contents is required. Until now, the indexing process is mostly carried out by specialists who manually assign a few keywords to the video contents and thereby this work becomes an expensive and time consuming task. Therefore, automatic classification of video content is necessary. We propose a fully automatic and computationally efficient method for analysis and summarization of spots news video for 5 spots news video such as soccer, golf, baseball, basketball and volleyball. First of all, spots news videos are classified as anchor-person Shots, and the other shots are classified as news reports shots. Shot classification is based on image preprocessing and color features of the anchor-person shots. We then use the dominant color of the field and motion features for analysis of sports shots, Finally, sports shots are classified into five genre type. We achieved an overall average classification accuracy of 75% on sports news videos with 241 scenes. Therefore, the proposed method can be further used to search news video for individual sports news and sports highlights.

With the advancement of internet and video compression technology, there has been an increasing demand for video, and producted a large quantity contents of UCC. Therefore, Semantic-sensitive retrieval and construction for digital video library is more in demand than ever. However, it is extremely difficult to categorize and label scenes in any video automatically for searching wanted scene. This study proposes a method to extract certain scenes and analyze the video content, and shows the experimental results after categorizing 5 sports news(soccer, baseball, golf, basketball, and volleyball).

The effects of pattern dimension on the quality of cubic SiC thin films were investigated, grown on patterned Si substrates using the chemical vapor deposition technique. Results of various characterization techniques indicated that the quality of SiC films on the patterned substrates does not noticeably improve. It was observed from high-resolution x-ray diffraction (XRD) that SiC films on scratched surfaces (≤10-nm deep) show comparable quality to SiC on flat Si, and the quality of the SiC grown on substrates with saw-tooth patterns (∼25-nm or ∼75-nm deep) might even be lower than that of the SiC/flat-Si films.

The World Health Organization declared that a new strain of novel swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus was responsible for the pandemic infection in June 2009. We report a case of encephalitis diagnosed as the H1N1 virus infection. We describe a 17-year-old patient who had a seizure attack, diagnosed with a H1N1 virus infection via real time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The H1N1 virus infection can be causative of the encephalitis, as with other influenza virus infections. Careful monitoring is essential for reducing complications.

Purpose We investigated the localizing and lateralizing values of auras in patients with lesional partial epilepsy on an outpatient basis. Materials and methods A total of 276 subjects were retrospectively selected for this study if they had a unilateral single lobar lesion based on magnetic resonance image (MRI) results, and their scalp electroencephalography (EEG) findings were not discordant with the MRI-defined lobar localization and lateralization. According to the lesion locations, subjects were considered as having mesial temporal (MTLE), lateral temporal (LTLE), frontal (FLE), parietal (PLE), or occipital (OLE) lobe epilepsies. Auras were classified into 13 categories. Results A hundred and seventy-six subjects (63.8%) had experienced at least one aura. FLE subjects had the fewest number of auras. Epigastric and psychic auras were frequent among MTLE subjects, while visual auras were common in those with PLE and OLE. Somatosensory auras and whole body sensations were more frequent in the subjects with PLE than those without. Autonomic auras were more common in MTLE subjects than in LTLE subjects. Dysphasic auras were more frequently found in left-sided epilepsies. Five pairs of aura categories showed concurrent tendencies, which were the epigastric and autonomic auras, autonomic and emotional auras, visual and vestibular auras, auditory and vestibular auras, and whole-body sensation and auditory auras. Autonomic and emotional auras had a concurrent tendency in left-sided epilepsies, but not in right-sided epilepsies. Conclusion Our results support the previously known localizing value of auras, and suggest that dysphasic auras and the association of emotional and autonomic auras may have a lateralizing value.

c BackgroundᄏNeurocutaneous melanosis (NCM) is a rare neurocutaneous syndrome charac- terized by the presence of multiple congenital melanocytic nevi (CMN) and the proliferation of melanocytes in the central nervous system, usually involving the leptomeninges. Chronic par- tial epilepsy as a sole manifestation is rare in NCM. Case ReportᄏA 32-year-old man suffering from chronic partial epilepsy presented with mul- tiple CMN on his trunk and scalp. Brain MRI demonstrated a focal lesion in the right amygdala that was consistent with interictal epileptiform discharges in the right temporal region on elec- troencephalography (EEG). An anterior temporal lobectomy was performed, and the pathology investigation revealed numerous melanophages in the amygdala. The patient was seizure-free after surgery. ConclusionsᄏWe report a patient with NCM presenting as chronic partial epilepsy who was successfully treated by anterior temporal lobectomy. J Clin Neurol 2008;4:134-137