What Constellation of Symptoms Would you Expect In PML?

Question

Motor or Sensory, Both?

Answer 1

-Insidious onset of focal symptoms including behavioral, speech, cognitive, motor, and visual impairment

-Rare headaches, seizures, and neck stiffness

-Subacute evolution over several weeks

Answer 2

PML is a motor-cognitive disorder. As such, symptoms of PML include mental deterioration, vision loss, speech disturbances, ataxia (inability to coordinate movements), paralysis, and coma. In rare cases, seizures may occur.

From one 2003 study (N=100), characteristics most often included various cognitive manifestations "At physical exam, focal signs were reported in 79.2% of patients, cognitive symptoms in 67.3%, and an abnormal mental status in 24.8%". From:

http://www.jneurovirol.com/o_pdf/9(supp1...

Clinical variables have a very LOW diagnostic capability, due to great variation. So, PCR amplifications in CSF for JCV-DNA, represents an essential step in the diagnosis of PML. Detection of JC virus is considered essential for the final diagnosis of PML. One example:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17380...

PCR has been shown to be so highly specific and sensitive for the JC virus, it has been cited that the need for brain biopsy could conceivably be eliminated.

EDIT: Yes, from my reading, anything less appears rather presumptive, if not entirely flimsy, and may I add, not without dire consequence to any patient in question.

EDIT 2: Yeah, it is a sure bet, the multifaceted, far-reaching, devastating consequences of misdiagnoses fall on the patient.

It appears fairly logical that if a tool is readily available that may definitively, reliably, and accurately determine if someone has PML, it would be relied on. No JC virus=no definitive diagnosis.

EDIT 3: I think, many times, people would like to believe that certain characteristics, abilities, and qualities can be assumed about a person possessing an MD...like, thinking logically. But, that is simply not always true. Too bad they impact one another to such an extent...

EDIT 4: Childhood milestones not so functional in adulthood particularly when very real, necessarily reverberative responsibilities, including the lives of people, are impacted by the distortion...

EDIT 5: I'm having a hard time thinking of something to say in response to your latest edit. I agree one hundred times over...eloquently said, not sure what I can add...

People who believe themselves to be infallible frighten me. Scarier, still, when this is combined with power.

I can see too many ways that we live in a world of fantasies. I wonder if submerged truth always comes to the top. I don't know.