|
LETTER TO EDITOR |
|
|
|
Year : 2006 | Volume
: 9
| Issue : 2 | Page : 126-127 |
|
Authors' reply
PS Mathuranath, A George, R Mathew, PJ Cherian
Department of Neurology, SCTIMST, Trivandrum, India
Correspondence Address: P S Mathuranath Department of Neurology, SCTIMST, Trivandrum India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/0972-2327.25990
How to cite this article: Mathuranath P S, George A, Mathew R, Cherian P J. Authors' reply. Ann Indian Acad Neurol 2006;9:126-7 |
Sir,
We thank Dr. Shanbhougu and colleagues for their comments on our article and agree with them that more such reports on the natural course of PPA will aid in understanding the neural network of language. We would like to clarify, however, that in our article we purport to document certain observations on a group of patients with PPA and do not intend to support or refute any of the models that different schools of thoughts propose to potentially explain the language impairment in this disease. Our observations in the reported cases make us believe that subtle behavioural changes in a subset of patients who would otherwise qualify to be called as PPA does not disqualify these patients from being clinically called as PPA. Furthermore, we have observed that impairment in information content on formal use of WAB seems to be an accompaniment in such patients. The mechanisms for this accompaniment, we feel, can be only be addressed if more reports on PPA can reproduce this finding. These observations make us think that the clinical manifestation of the disease are not necessarily a function of only the duration of the disease, and therefore, applying strict criteria of two years of pure language impairment in memory clinics may exclude some patients with this condition, although in a research setting it may most certainly increase the specificity. Though we ourselves do not propose any particular model for PPA, we are happy if investigators working on those lines find our observations useful for their purposes.
|