CLIPPERS Christmas 2013

To finish off 2013, two CLIPPERS cases are reported in a single paper which focuses on movement disorders. In the first case, the problem was limb tremor and mild dystonia. In the second case, the problem was hand and facial jerks, which manifested two years after CLIPPERS was diagnosed. The authors suggest that movement disorders, although not "classic" CLIPPERS symptoms, may be present because of the lesion location in particular cases. They point out that, in such cases, specialised treatment for the specific movment disorder may be warranted. (Incidentally, I'm not sure if this paper is freely available, but if anyone is interested and has problems accessing it, they can click through to the author information on the journal web-site and try emailing them for a "pre-print".)

Interestingly, I developed some intermittent stiffness and jerking movements in my legs after I began steroid treatment in 2011, but these gradually went away. They were definitely coincident with the start of treatment, but I've no idea why they should have appeared. My (no doubt completely wrong) theory was that as the brain inflammation improved slowly in response to steroids there was a period where some affected bits of brain were only partly functional?

Anyway, many thanks as ever to friends old and new who follow this site, and I wish you a happy and healthy 2014.

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Living With CLIPPERS by Bill Crum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

CLIPPERS linked with MS again.

Another case study has appeared, this time originating  from Japan. This concerns a single subject (33 year old male) who displays enough symptoms to be considered a CLIPPERS sufferer. I'm sure I'm not the only one who reads these things and mentally ticks off the list of symptoms we have in common. This is one of those cases which I don't relate to particularly as I had a different set of symptoms (e.g. I didn't have scanning speech and retained my ability to walk - with difficulty). However CLIPPERS is hard to ring-fence because of the diffuse nature of the disease and I know the symptoms can vary quite a lot both in their type and their intensity. The pattern of lesions in this patient also looks more extensive than I had - compare my scan here with the patient brain in figure 1a - which may explain some of the differences.

The authors are reporting this case for the record without speculating too much. They suggest that CLIPPERS could be a syndrome rather than a disease - this is regularly discussed in the various papers. They also suggest in passing, that the similarities with Multiple Sclerosis mean that CLIPPERS could have something fundamentally in common with it. Here, "could" is the key word, as lots of things "could" be possible but there doesn't seem to be enough evidence (disclaimer: I am not a doctor) to suggest a firm linkage yet.

Read other articles in this series at Living With CLIPPERS.

Living With CLIPPERS by Bill Crum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.