Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Takayasu Arteritis: A Rare Cause Of Chronic Headache, Linda Barasa, Adil Salyani, Jillo Bika, Fred Otieno, Dilraj Sokhi

Internal Medicine, East Africa

Chronic headache can be a presenting manifestation of Takayasu arteritis, although patients usually have other characteristic features. A thorough clinical assessment remains key in the evaluation of chronic headache.

“Old People Problems”, Uncertainty And Legitimacy: Challenges With Diagnosing Parkinson's Disease In Kenya, Natasha Fothergill-Misbah, Richard Walker, Judith Kwasa, Juzar Hooker, Kate Hampshire

Internal Medicine, East Africa

Very little is known about the experience of people living with Parkinson's disease (PD) in low- and middle-income countries, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa. The number of specialists in the region is low and awareness is limited among the population and healthcare professionals. Drawing on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in urban and rural Kenya with 55 people living with PD (PwP), 23 family members and 22 healthcare professionals from public and private clinics, we set out to understand the experience of diagnosis among PwP in Kenya. The diagnostic journeys of our study participants were typically long, convoluted and …

Cases Of Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder From The East Africa Region, Highlighting Challenges In Diagnostics And Healthcare Access, Dilraj Sokhi, Adil Suleiman, Soraiya Manji, Juzar Hooker, Peter Mativo

Internal Medicine, East Africa

Background: Neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) is an auto-immune disease of the central nervous system (CNS) associated with the IgG-antibody against aquaporin-4 (AQP4-IgG). There is little published epidemiology of NMOSD from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Methods: We retrospectively collated NMOSD cases admitted to our tertiary regional neurology centre.

Results: We identified 11 cases (10 female, average age 30 years). 64% (7/11) were seropositive for AQP4-IgG, measured using indirect immunofluorescence. The remaining cases could either not afford tests, or had patho-gnomonic radiological features. 57% (4/7) of seropositive cases had concurrent/recent CNS infection. All pa-tients were treated with high-dose intravenous …

Heidenhain Variant Of Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease: First Reported Case From East Africa, Dilraj Sokhi, Fazal Yakub, Karishma Sharma, Sheila Was, Peter Mativo

Internal Medicine, East Africa

Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD) is a rare prion disease that causes rapidly progressive fatal neurodegeneration. The rarer Heidenhain variant of sCJD presents with visual symptoms and is rarely reported in the literature from sub-Saharan Africa. We report the case of a 57-year-old male with a three-week history of losing direction when driving home and visual hallucinations described as seeing rainbows. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain revealed unilateral parieto-occipital sulcal hyperintensities with restriction on diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), and electroencephalography (EEG) showed right para-central slowing leading to an initial diagnosis of non-convulsive status epilepticus. He was treated with anti-epileptic medication …