Septic Arthritis Caused by Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron Bacteremia in a Patient with Multiple Myeloma / 대한내과학회지

Septic arthritis is rarely caused by anaerobic bacteria, which is mostly secondary to hematogenous dissemination among the immunocompromised host. We report a patient of septic arthritis on the right knee joint caused by Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron. To the best of knowledge, this is the first report of septic arthritis caused by Bacteroides spp. in Korea.

Features of Semantic Language Impairment in Patients with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

BACKGROUND: To elucidate the earliest changes of language function in patients with dementia of Alzheimer's type (DAT), performance on the various semantic language tasks were compared between patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) (n=20), mild DAT (n=20) and normal cognition elderly individuals (NC, n=20). METHODS: Language tasks included levels of word, sentence and discourse. In the word level, confrontation naming test (Korean version-Boston Naming Test, K-BNT) and the verbal fluency (semantic and phonemic fluency) tasks were used. In the sentence level, the verbal definition tasks including 24 nouns four categories were used. In the discourse level, the Boston Cookie-Theft picture description task was used. The picture description task was analyzed for both productive aspect (total number of sentences, total number of phrases and phrases per sentence) and semantic aspect (ratio of CIU: Correct Information Unit). RESULTS: The results from this study are as follow: 1) In the confrontation naming test, mild DAT group showing worse performances than the NC and aMCI group. However, no differences were observed between the NC and aMCI group. 2) The performances of verbal fluency task showed significantly differences between the all groups. 3) In the verbal definition task, performances of NC group showing better performances than aMCI and mild DAT group. However, no differences were observed between the aMCI and mild DAT group. 4) In the picture description task, performances of the aMCI and mild DAT group were non-informative and inefficient in semantic aspect compared to the NC group. However, no differences were observed between the three groups on productive aspect. CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrated that the deficit of semantic language is readily identified in the aMCI stage, and it can be revealed by tasks of sentence and discourse level.

A Comparison on the Naming Abilities by Modality in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease

BACKGROUND: Impairments of language function represent patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) from the early stage and as the disease progresses the damage spreads over a much broader range of cognition and communicative functions. And, performances of the naming tasks in AD patients may reveal the gradual deterioration of their naming ability. METHODS: In this study, naming ability was studied in patients with questionable AD (CDR 0.5, n=10), mild AD (CDR 1, n=10), moderate AD (CDR 2, n=10) and 10 healthy controls matched for age, gender and educational level using confrontation naming and naming by verbal definition tasks. The purpose of present study was 1) to investigate whether the confrontation naming and naming by verbal definition in Alzheimer's disease is different depending on the severity, 2) to examine the effects of the syllabic cue on the two naming ability for the errors questions. RESULTS: The results from this study are as follow: 1) The two naming performances of the all AD groups were lower than those of normal people and showed significant difference. 2) There were differences between the two naming tasks, significantly lower performance on confrontation naming task than naming by verbal definition. 3) The effects of syllabic cue decreased gradually as severity progressed. 4) The effects of syllabic cue were no significant differences between the two naming tasks. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that anomia in patients with AD is due to various impairment including to lexico-semantic system, visual processing, phonological processing and auditory comprehension.