[University teaching in clinical neurology: present situation and future requirements]. / Universitäre Lehre in der Neurologie : Aktuelle Situation und zukünftiger Bedarf.

BACKGROUND: In German Hospitals there is a lack of medical personnel and doctors in particular. Clinical specialities and hospitals are in competition for students and young doctors and these, in turn, have clear cut demands regarding working conditions and professional training. To date there is considerable heterogeneity regarding clinical teaching in neurology between different German universities. There are no data available for systematic comparison. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This article presents for the first time data from a survey on academic teaching in neurology in German university hospitals. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The data show that many faculties are dedicated to modern and practical teaching methods and have employed state of the art examinations and progress tests. Further and ongoing efforts will be needed in order to inspire medical students and young doctors for this interesting clinical speciality. Connecting individual formats and networking between universities, teaching hospitals, including novel developments together with the young neurologists will help to structure our efforts and increase sustained attractiveness of clinical neurology for the following generations of young doctors.

Transgenic and knock-out mice: models of neurological disease.

Besides providing useful model systems for basic science, studies based on modification of the mammalian germ line are changing our understanding of pathogenetic principles. In this article, we review the most popular techniques for generating specific germ line mutations in vivo and discuss the impact of various transgenic models on the study of neurodegenerative diseases. The "gain of function" approach, i.e., ectopic expression of exogenous genes in neural structures, has deepened our understanding of neurodegeneration resulting from infection with papova viruses, picorna viruses, and human retroviruses. Further, inappropriate expression of mutated cellular molecules in the nervous system of transgenic mice is proving very useful for studying conditions whose pathogenesis is controversial, such as Alzheimer's disease and motor neuron diseases. As a complementary approach, ablation of entire cell lineages by tissue-specific expression of toxins has been useful in defining the role of specific cellular compartments. Modeling of recessive genetic diseases, such as Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, was helped by the development of techniques for targeted gene deletion (colloquially termed "gene knock-out"). Introduction of subtle homozygous mutations in the mouse genome was made possible by the latter approach. Such "loss of function" mutants have been used for clarifying the role of molecules thought to be involved in development and structural maintenance of the nervous system, such as the receptors for nerve growth factor and the P0 protein of peripheral myelin. In addition, these models are showing their assets also in the study of enigmatic diseases such as spongiform encephalopathies.