Risk Factors and Demographics in Patients With Spasmodic Dysphonia

Abstract

The majority of patients with spasmodic dysphonia are girls and women. A significantly higher incidence of childhood viral illness was found in the patients with spasmodic dysphonia. Patients with spasmodic dysphonia had a significant incidence of both essential tremor and writer's cramp but no history of major illness or other neurological disorder. There appear to be no significant environmental or hereditary patterns in the etiology of spasmodic dysphonia. Stress or viral infection may induce the onset of symptoms of spasmodic dysphonia. Many features of the disorder are common to other movement disorders, and this knowledge may direct future research efforts.

Exploration on the Underlying Mechanism of Female Predominance in Spasmodic Dysphonia: An Anatomical Study of Nodose Ganglion in Rats

“…Most scholars recently believe that this disease stems from neurodegenerative diseases [10], as classified by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). In [24] reported a female predominance of 79 % (134 cases) out of a total population of 168 spasmodic dysphonia patients, which is consistent with previous reports [6].…”

Spasmodic Dysphonia

“…However, in light of existing information, no other part of the body is affected in the majority of patients with SD (7). The disease is usually observed in adults and in women (2,5,7).…”

“…The disease is usually observed in adults and in women (2,5,7). According to the study of Schweinfurth et al (7), the disease is observed between the ages of 13-71 years. It was also reported that upper respiratory tract infection or stressful conditions may be triggered in some patients (7).…”

TorsinA and the Pathophysiology of DYT1 Dystonia

“…Alternatively, scoliosis could simply be the manifestation of axial dystonia, which precedes the development of adult-onset cervical dystonia. Measles, mumps, or upper respiratory tract infections appear to be associated with the onset of spasmodic dysphonia (Schweinfurth et al, 2002). Defazio and colleagues (1999) also reported that prior head or face trauma with loss of consciousness was a risk factor for the spread of blepharospasm.…”

“…Trauma to the PNS and CNS (Schott, 1985;Lee et al, 1994;Sankhla et al, 1998;Hollinger and Burgunder, 2000;Hummel and Lucking, 2001), drugs (Remington et al, 1990;Khanna et al, 1992;van Harten et al, 1998;van Harten et al, 1999), neurotoxins (Liu et al, 1992;He et al, 1995;Johnson et al, 2000), and stroke (Krystkowiak et al, 1998;Alarcon et al, 2004) are known causes of secondary dystonia. Environmental factors also correlate with the onset of primary adult-onset dystonias (Chen and Hallett, 1998;Schweinfurth et al, 2002;Defazio et al, 2003). Because DYT1 mutation carriers demonstrate variable phenotypes from primary generalized dystonia to adult-onset focal dystonia, DYT1 dystonia and sporadic adult-onset dystonia may share common environmental risk factors (Leube et al, 1999;Grundmann et al, 2003).…”