Dystypia Associated with Diaschisis of the Middle Frontal Gyri after Left Angular Infarction.

Dystypia without aphasia, agraphia, or apraxia is a rare symptom and has been suggested to result from a lesion in the left middle frontal cortex. We herein describe a man with dystypia with agraphia due to infarction of the left angular gyrus. His dystypia seemed to result from the convergence failure of the kana into the alphabetical spellings. During dystypia, hypoperfusion of the bilateral middle frontal cortices was discovered. However, after his symptoms improved, blood flow in the middle frontal cortices returned to normal. This case suggests that the middle frontal cortex is downstream of the angular gyrus in the dictating pathway and a lesion in the left middle frontal cortex could cause pure dystypia.

Cortical Hyperintensity on Diffusion-weighted Images as the Presymptomatic Marker of Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

We herein report a sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD) patient followed from the presymptomatic phase to death. A 67-year-old woman had abnormal hyperintense cortical lesions on diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) one year before the onset. The levels of 14-3-3 protein and total tau protein, and findings from a real-time quaking-induced conversion test were normal at first but became abnormal after disease onset. Although there are four reports of presymptomatic sCJD identified by MRI, this is the first case report in which all three biomarkers had been assessed before and after the disease onset. MRI might be the most sensitive modality for detecting presymptomatic sCJD patients.

Revival of Historical Kana Orthography in a Patient with Allographic Agraphia.

Japanese people born before World War II learned Japanese kana (Japanese syllabograms) writing in a style that is not currently used. These individuals had to learn the current style of kana orthography after the war. An 85-year-old man was taken to our hospital by his family who were surprised by his diary. It was written with kanji (Japanese ideograms) and katakana using the prewar style. A neuropsychological examination revealed impaired recall of hiragana. Neuroimaging studies revealed atrophy of the left fronto-parietal lobe and hypoperfusion of the left frontal lobe. His allographic agraphia might have resulted from the disturbance of the current style of kana orthography.

Agraphia in Mobile Text Messages in a Case of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis with Frontotemporal Dementia.

We herein describe the case of a woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) showing errors in her choice of Japanese kana characters in her mobile text messages and agraphia of the kana in her handwriting in spite of the absence of weakness, ataxia, or apraxia of her hands. Magnetic resonance imaging showed the atrophy of the frontal lobes. Single-photon emission computed tomography revealed hypoperfusion of the frontal lobes including Exner's area. Although patients with bulbar-onset ALS have been reported to show agraphia of handwriting, in this case the basis of her agraphia might have been the disturbance of the pathway converting phones to graphemes in series, by which errors of spelling or writing would appear in any modality of output.

High-performance purification of gelsolin from plasma using anion-exchange porous hollow-fiber membrane.

Gelsolin was purified from bovine plasma using an anion-exchange porous hollow-fiber membrane. The anion-change porous hollow-fiber membrane was prepared by radiation-induced graft polymerization of an epoxy-group-containing monomer, glycidyl methacrylate, and subsequent chemical modifications. Some of the epoxy groups of the polymer chain grafted onto the pore surface were converted into diethylamino groups, and the remaining epoxy groups were converted into 2-hydroxyethylamino groups. First, a gelsolin-containing dialyzed protein solution, prepared by pretreatments of ammonium sulfate precipitation and dialysis of plasma, was forced to permeate through the pores of an anion-exchange porous hollow-fiber membrane. Various proteins including gelsolin were adsorbed onto the anion-exchange polymer brush at a high rate with negligible diffusional mass-transfer resistance. Second, adsorbed gelsolin was specifically eluted by permeating 2mM calcium chloride. The amount of recovered gelsolin was 0.1 mg per 1 mL of plasma. Third, the remaining adsorbed proteins were quantitatively eluted with 1M sodium chloride, leading to a constant amount of recovered gelsolin during four cycles of purification. The total time required for gelsolin purification from 30 mL of bovine plasma was 11h, during which the time for selective adsorption of various proteins and affinity elution of gelsolin using the anion-exchange porous hollow-fiber membrane was 20 min.