Objectives– To determine the incidence of post-ictal headaches (PIH) and clinical risk factors associated with the occurrence of PIH in patients with localization-related epilepsy. Materials and methods– The subjects were 77 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), 34 patients with occipital lobe epilepsy (OLE), and 50 patients with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE). The subjects were directly asked whether headaches occurred just after seizures. Medical charts were reviewed to ascertain the clinical characteristics of epilepsy in these patients. Results– The incidence of PIH was 23% for TLE, 62% for OLE, and 42% for FLE. The risk of PIH was significantly higher for OLE than for TLE or FLE, and for patients with generalized tonic–clonic seizures. Younger age at onset of epilepsy was also a risk factor for PIH. Conclusion– The occurrence of PIH may be related to the region of epileptic focus and the region of spread of epileptic discharges.
Lithium is a first-line agent for the treatment of bipolar disorder. A significant association between the Val66Met polymorphism of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene and bipolar disorder has been reported. We investigated whether this polymorphism is associated with the response to lithium treatment in Japanese patients with bipolar disorder. Patients had been treated with lithium carbonate for more than 1 year, and the response was retrospectively evaluated. No significant differences were found in the genotype distribution or allele frequency between responders and non-responders. Our results suggested that the brain-derived neurotrophic factor Val66Met polymorphism might not greatly contribute to the efficacy of lithium in bipolar disorder.
We have studied ferromagnetic (FM) structures in the FM phase of MnP single crystals by low-temperature Lorentz transmission electron microscopy and small-angle electron diffraction analysis. In Lorentz Fresnel micrographs, striped FM domain structures were observed at an external magnetic field less than 10 Oe in specimens with the a b -plane in their plane. From real- and reciprocal-space analyses, it was clearly identified that striped FM domains oriented to the c -axis appear with Bloch-type domain walls in the b -direction and order regularly along the a -axis with a constant separation less than 100 nm. Moreover, the magnetic chirality reverses in alternate FM domain walls. These specific spin configuration of striped FM domains will affect the magnetic phase transition from the FM phase to the proper screw spiral phase at low temperature or to the FAN phase in magnetic fields in MnP.
