5 cm.”
“BACKGROUND: Tremor is an important cause of disability in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the ventral intermediate nucleus (VIM) of the thalamus is said to be beneficial for MS tremor.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the long-term efficacy of VIM DBS for MS disabling

tumor.

METHODS: We treated 10 patients (4 men and 6 women) with advanced MS-related medication-resistant tremor with DBS at the VIM thalamic nucleus. DBS was unilateral in 9 patients and bilateral selleck chemicals in 1 patient in 2 stages. Contralateral arm tremor was assessed with the Fahn-Tolosa-Marin tremor rating scale.

RESULTS: At 1 year, 5 of 10 patients (5 of 11 hemispheres) had a reduction in tremor scores with stimulation compared with baseline; in 3 HKI-272 order patients, the reduction was > 50%. After 36 months, 3 patients continued benefiting from stimulation, 2 having > 50% improvement. Of the 6 symptomatic sides that did not benefit at 1 year, 3 failed to have even initial benefit, and 3 had a transient improvement lasting < 1 year. One patient stopped using stimulation because of a lack of improvement at 5 months after surgery and was lost to follow-up.

CONCLUSION: Approximately one-half of the patients derived some benefit from VIM DBS

1 year after surgery, but this benefit reached a > 50% reduction in only 30% of the patients. This level of improvement may be related to the variability of the demyelinating MRIP lesions and the superimposition of ataxia in the MS patients. Developing better treatments for MS tremor continues to be a challenge.”
“Most kidney diseases that ultimately lead to end-stage renal failure originate within the glomerulus and are associated with proteinuria. Treatment

options are unspecific and offer partial cures at best because available therapies do not primarily treat glomerular cells but rather act systemically and thus cause many side effects. Most glomerulopathies directly stem from injury to podocytes, cells that have a key role in the maintenance of the glomerular filter. Thus, these cells constitute an obvious and promising target for the development of novel kidney-protective drugs. During the last decade, enormous advances have been made in the understanding of podocyte structure and function. A number of pathways that are altered during glomerular diseases may be targeted by novel small-and large-molecule drugs as well as biologicals that have been identified in nephrology and other areas of drug development. Cultured podocytes provide a valuable model for high-throughput drug screening assays. Furthermore, podocytes have been shown to possess many features that make them particularly good target cells for renal protection.