Volume 12 Issue 4, April 2016

A new study has shown that both in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and in healthy controls, dopamine inhibits production of IL-17 and IFN-γ by peripheral blood mononuclear cells. The finding adds to previous evidence for the potential benefit of dopaminergic drugs in MS.

Prognostic scoring systems are widely used as objective outcome predictors in neurocritical care, for example, after haemorrhagic stroke. A new study, however, has unexpectedly shown that clinicians can predict outcome after intracerebral haemorrhage more accurately than do formal scoring scales.

Rare neurological diseases require widely distributed networks of centres, investigators and patients to foster multidisciplinary investigations and recruit sufficient numbers of patients for research studies and clinical trials. In this article, Jen and colleagues highlight the role of two networks, the Consortium for Clinical Investigations of Neurological Channelopathies (CINCH) and the Clinical Research Consortium for Studies of Cerebellar Ataxias (CRC-SCA), in bringing together the various stakeholders in patient-oriented research into rare neurological channelopathies.

Epilepsy develops in many patients with glioma, and the two presentations are currently treated with independent therapies. In this Review, Huberfeld and Vecht provide an overview of the evidence that epilepsy and gliomas share pathogenic mechanisms that could be targeted to simultaneously manage seizures and target tumours. They consider the benefits and risks of using antiepileptic drugs to treat gliomas, and antitumour drugs to control epilepsy.

The range of immunomodulatory therapies to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) has widened markedly in recent years, and MS treatments have become more efficient. This improvement in efficacy has been accompanied by an increased risk of treatment-associated infections. In this Review, Winkelman et al. discuss the modes of action of the currently available MS therapies and detail the specific infections associated with each treatment. They consider how this information can influence the daily clinical use of MS therapies, so as to minimize the associated infectious risk.

Despite highly effective combination antiretroviral therapies, the prevalence of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND) has not reduced. To date, clinical trials of HAND therapies have been unsuccessful, calling for better understanding of HAND pathogenesis to develop more-effective treatment strategies. In this Review, Justin McArthur and colleagues discuss recent proceedings in understanding the immunopathogenesis of HAND, drawing from human studies and animal models.