Athetosis

Clinic

• It is an entity, characterized by slow, involuntary, convoluted, writhing movements of the fingers, hands, toes, and feet and in some cases, arms, legs, neck and tongue.
• Sometimes called athetoid movements.
• Brain lesions particularly to corpus striatum or hippocampus and the motor thalamus
• It does not occur alone and is often accompanied by the symptoms of cerebral palsy, as it is often a result of this physical disability.
• Athetosis typically involves the distal extremities (hands or feet) more than the proximal and it can also involve the face, neck, and trunk.

Signs and symptoms

• Unbalanced, Difficulty maintaining a symmetrical posture.
• It can appear as early as 18 months from birth which progressively worsen through adolescence and at times of emotional distress.
• First signs including difficulty feeding, hypotonia, spasm, and involuntary writhing movements of the hands, feet, and face
• Children during the developmental age could possibly suffer from severe communication deficits such as speech impairment, hearing loss.
• They failed or delayed acquirement of sitting balance.
• Although most people with athetosis have normal or near-normal intelligence.

Causes

• Athetosis occurs when there has been damage to the corpus striatum (caudate and putamen) in the basal ganglia, most often in children with perinatal ischemia
• Athetosis is a symptom primarily caused by the marbling, or degeneration of basal ganglia
• This degeneration is most commonly caused by complications at birth or by Huntington's disease
• In addition to rare cases in which the damage may also arise later in life due to stroke (Thalamic stroke) or trauma.
• The two complications of particular interest are intranatal asphyxia and neonatal jaundice.

• Fahr's syndrome

Miasms:

CJD according to a case presentation in 1999.

I think Athetosis is not a dynamic entity. It is a static dysfunction of BG, but if we want to find a similar miasm, we should consider its accompanies entities:

• Mouth, Speech difficult
• Hypotonia
• Spasm
• Face, Palsy
• Hearing impaired

Therefore the best similar miasm would be PLV. Although there is no case report for this claim.

Related Entities

• Chorea: Chorea is an ongoing random-appearing sequence of one or more discrete involuntary movements or movement fragments. Athetosis is a slow, continuous, involuntary writhing movement that prevents maintenance of a stable posture.

• Dystonia: Athetosis is distinguished from dystonia by the lack of sustained postures, although it is frequently associated with dystonia so the distinction can be difficult in practice.

• Stereotypy: Athetosis is not rhythmic or stereotyped
• Catatonia