December 2011 Archives

While the best way to get to full-text of articles is to use our special link to PubMed or find the journal in our ejournal list, it is often easier just to Google the journal. If you are on-campus (ie. PWB) a lot of journal websites will recognize that and automatically give you access to full-text. From off-campus, though, this does not work.

If you have browsed to a journal and want to get to the full-text, try using our proxy bookmarklet. It will not work for all journals (some we buy from non-publisher sources), but it should work for many.

For those of you with iPads, I wanted to point out that you can read both Neurology and Neurology Clinical Practice (new journal from AAN) on your iPad. Just download the following apps and enter in your AAN credentials to get full access.

Neurology
Neurology Clinical Practice

You can download the full text of each journal (and can read it without an internet connection), easily access supplemental materials, post comments on articles, and even email, tweet, or post to Facebook about the articles.

They hope to add more videos and additional content in the future. All in all, it is pretty slick.

Stiff person syndrome is a rare (estimated 1-2 cases per million) disorder, "characterized by progressive muscle stiffness, rigidity, and spasm involving the axial muscles, resulting in severely impaired ambulation." ("Stiff person syndrome," UpToDate)

60-80% of patients have autoantibodies against glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD), though amphiphysin and gephyrin autoantibodies may also be present in the paraneoplastic variant.

A recent and concise review (with images, differential, and treatment) can be found at Stiff Person Syndrome.

Two additional case reports (with MRI and photographs respectively), can be found at:
Sudden spasms following gradual lordosis--the stiff-person syndrome
Stiff person syndrome presenting with sudden onset of shortness of breath and difficulty moving the right arm: a case report