Torsion dystonias. Biochemical and PET studies

In the first edition of this book we reported of enhanced serotonin exchange in dystonia. Later we applied to that data more sophisticated methods of statistical analysis, such as decision tree and discriminate analysis, and these advanced methods allowed us to elaborate new powerful diagnostic tests for diagnosis of dystonia with increased plasma level of 5-HTP beeing extremely sensitive and specific sign of dystonia. We are telling of these new results in the first chapter of the second edition of the book. In the first edition we published results of PET study with 18 - FDG of brain of patients with dystonia and essential tremor (ET). The results were presented in semi quantitative form of percentage of change of glucose metabolism, without comparison with the healthy control. The calculation has been done by means of software package SPM2, and that study revealed decrease of glucose metabolism in different brain areas in all patients, and failed to detect any difference between the dystonia and the ET. In the second chapter we tell of new PET calculation method of Z - score, that by means of comparison with the healthy, allowed us to detect difference between dystonia and ET. von Belenky, Vadim