Abstract
Introduction : Spinocerebellar degeneration (SCD) is a disease that presents with slowly progressive cerebellar ataxia symptoms. Protirelin and taltirelin are often used to treat with this disorder. There are few reports about assessing therapeutic effects using Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA) and International Cooperative Ataxia Rating Scale (ICARS). We investigated therapeutic effectiveness of protirelin, using SARA and ICARS for assessment.
Method : Ten SCD patients treated with protirelin were included in this study. We analyzed the scores of SARA and ICARS before and after treatment with protirelin for two weeks. Statistical analysis was performed using Wilcoxon signed rank test.
Results : Improvements of both total SARA and total ICARS scores were observed (total SARA scores before 16.25, after 12.90, p＝0.0176 : total ICARS scores before 41.50, after 32.75, p＝0.0020). The scores of kinetic functions and posture and gait disturbance were improved significantly. However improvement of the scores of speech disorders and oculomotor disorders were not observed.
Conclusion : Protirelin was found to be effective against SCD, using SARA and ICARS.
