Wszołek, Zbigniew K.

ABSTRACTBackgroundCerebellar ataxia is an exclusion criterion for the clinical diagnosis of progressive supranuclear palsy, but a variant with predominant cerebellar ataxia has been reported. The aims of this study were to estimate the frequency of progressive supranuclear palsy with predominant cerebellar ataxia in an autopsy series from the United States and to compare clinical, pathologic, and genetic differences between progressive supranuclear palsy with and without predominant cerebellar ataxia.MethodWe selected 100 consecutive patients with pathologically confirmed progressive supranuclear palsy who had been evaluated at the Mayo Clinic (referred to as the Mayo Clinic patient series) from our brain bank database (N = 1085). We next enriched in cases likely to have cerebellar ataxia by searching the remaining 985 cases for (1) an antemortem diagnosis of multiple system atrophy or (2) neuropathologic evidence of prominent degeneration of the cerebellum or cerebellar afferent nuclei. Subsequently, clinical, pathologic, and genetic features were compared between the two groups.ResultsOne patient in the Mayo Clinic patient series (1%) met criteria for progressive supranuclear palsy with predominant cerebellar ataxia and had both cerebellar and mild midbrain atrophy on MRI. Four patients were identified with the targeted search. Four of the five patients were clinically misdiagnosed as multiple system atrophy. The severity of tau‐related pathology and cerebellar degeneration were not different between the two groups. No differences were detected in tau genotypes.ConclusionAlthough our data cannot provide definitive information about how to make an accurate clinical diagnosis, they should serve to raise awareness of progressive supranuclear palsy with predominant cerebellar ataxia in the differential diagnosis of multiple system atrophy. © 2016 Movement Disorder Society

BackgroundRecently, a novel mutation in exon 24 of DNAJC13 gene (p.Asn855Ser, rs387907571) has been reported to cause autosomal dominant Parkinson's disease (PD) in a multi‐incident Mennonite family.MethodsIn the present study the mutation containing exon of the DNAJC13 gene has been sequenced in a Caucasian series consisting of 1938 patients with clinical PD and 838 with pathologically diagnosed Lewy body disease (LBD).ResultsOur sequence analysis did not identify any coding variants in exon 24 of DNAJC13. Two previously described variants in intron 23 (rs200204728 and rs2369796) were observed.ConclusionOur results indicate that the region surrounding the DNAJC13 p.Asn855Ser substitution is highly conserved and mutations in this exon are not a common cause of PD or LBD among Caucasian populations.