Ocular Oscillations and Transient Oscillopsia in Neuromyelitis Optica

Abstract

Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is a chronic relapsing and disabling disease. It typically causes inflammatory destruction of optic nerve as well as spinal cord that ultimately leads to blindness and paraplegia, respectively. It is more commonly seen in females who are in late thirties and seropositive for anti-NMO-IgG autoantibodies. Ocular movement disorders form an important clinical sign of multiple sclerosis (MS). They are less commonly described in NMO and represent an overt or an occult pathology of brainstem. These ocular movement disturbances generally improve with treatment. However, oscillopsia, with or without nystagmus, is a less reported symptom of NMO that appears early during the course of disease. We are reporting a patient in whom the diagnosis of NMO was made only after the full evolution of the disease, because of the misconception that a closer association exists between MS and optic neuritis and nystagmus. Oscillopsia manifested late during the relapse in this case and disappeared on disease remission although nystagmus persisted throughout the course of disease. We recommend that in patients having nystagmus and optic neuritis a possibility of NMO must be kept in mind.




J Neurol Res. 2014;4(5-6):146-150
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14740/jnr308e