Benign hereditary chorea (BHC) is an autosomal dominant disorder characterized by chorea of early onset with little or no progression. There is marked clinical variability in this disease with some subjects having onset in infancy and others with onset in early adulthood. In contrast to Huntington's disease (HD), there is no dementia. Computed tomography is normal in all subjects with no evidence of caudate nucleus atrophy. We present the results of positron emission tomography using 18F-2-fluorodeoxyglucose on three patients with this disorder from two families. Cerebral glucose metabolism in one patient was decreased in the caudate nucleus, as previously reported in HD. The other two persons from a second family showed a relative decrease in metabolic rates of glucose in the caudate when compared with the thalamus. It appears that caudate hypometabolism is not specific for HD. These findings suggest that the caudate nucleus may play a significant role in the pathophysiology of some persons with BHC.

A series of telephone interviews were conducted to assess geriatric psychiatry content at each of Canada's 16 medical schools. Nearly all schools included geriatric psychiatry content and most of the teaching took place in the pre-clerkship. Geriatric psychiatrists are teaching and participating in the planning of the curriculum at most medical schools and most of the clinical experiences in geriatric psychiatry are occurring with inpatients. In order to enhance the teaching of geriatric psychiatry Canadian medical schools should increase the amount of ambulatory and community-based teaching, integrate more geriatric psychiatry teaching with geriatric medicine and increase the profile of geriatric psychiatry within the psychiatry clerkship rotation.