Stiff Person Syndrome and GAD Antibody–Spectrum Disorders With Dr. Marinos Dalakas
Description
Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS) is treatable if managed correctly from the outset. It is essential to distinguish SPS spectrum disorders from disease mimics to avoid both overdiagnoses and misdiagnoses.
In this episode, Allison Weathers, MD, FAAN, speaks with Marinos C. Dalakas, MD, FAAN, author of the article “Stiff Person Syndrome and GAD Antibody–Spectrum Disorders,” in the Continuum® August 2024 Autoimmune Neurology issue.
Dr. Weathers is a Continuum® Audio interviewer and associate chief medical information officer at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.
Dr. Dalakas is a professor of neurology and director of the neuromuscular division at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; a professor of neurology and chief of the neuroimmunology unit and the National and Kapodistrian at the University of Athens in Athens, Greece.
Additional Resources
Read the article: Stiff Person Syndrome and GAD Antibody–Spectrum Disorders
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Full episode transcript available here
Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum, the premier topic-based neurology clinical review and CME journal from the American Academy of Neurology. Thank you for joining us on Continuum Audio, which features conversations with Continuum’s guest editors and authors who are the leading experts in their fields. Subscribers to the Continuum journal can read the full article or listen to verbatim recordings of the article and have access to exclusive interviews not featured on the podcast. Please visit the link in the episode notes for more information on the article, subscribing to the journal, and how to get CME.
Dr Weathers: This is Dr Allison Weathers. Today, I'm interviewing Dr Marinos Dalakas about his article on stiff-person syndrome and GAD antibody-spectrum disorders, which is part of the August 2024 Continuum issue on autoimmune neurology. Dr Dalakas is a world- renowned expert in neuromuscular diseases and, really, the first name any neurologist thinks of when they hear the diagnosis of stiff-person syndrome. Dr Dalakas, this is such an honor to be able to speak to you today. Welcome to the podcast, and would you please introduce yourself to our audience?
Dr Dalakas: Yes, thank you very much. I'm so happy to participate in this interview. I'm the Chief of the Neuromuscular Division at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and I am interested in autoimmune neuromuscular diseases for many years and also on disease mechanisms and immunotherapy.
Dr Weathers: Thank you again for talking with me today. So, given how very rare stiff-person syndrome and the GAD antibody-spectrum disorders are, prior to December 2022, I would have started our time together by asking you to explain this collection of diagnoses to our listeners and by also talking about how often they occur. It feels like that's a bit unnecessary ever since Celine Dion went public with her diagnosis - that moment really changed the public awareness of what was previously outside of neurology and almost unheard-of disease. So, instead, I'll start with, what is the key message of your article? If our listeners are going to walk away remembering one thing from our discussion, what would you like it to be?
Dr Dalakas: Well, I think the publicity has been very good for the disease, this disease spectrum. On the other hand, there have been some misleading messages, like, it's extremely rare, it's untreatable, it's disabling – which, they are partially correct, so, my message is, first, to make sure the neurologists make the correct diagnosis, because there are a
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