[Somatosensitive and motor evoked potentials in HTLV-I associated myelopathy]

This study investigated 63 patients with HTLV-I associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) by somatosensitive evoked potentials (SEPs) and 42 of them by motor evoked potentials (MEP). All the patients had typical clinical history of HAM, serum samples tested positive for antibodies to HTLV-I screened for Particle Agglutination, ELISA and complemented by Western blot test. In patients studied by SEPs of lower limbs 51/63 (81 %) were abnormal and 11 of them (17.5%) were abnormal in upper limbs also. In patients studied by MEP 37/42 were abnormal, 34/42 (81%) in lower limbs and 25/42 (59.5%) in upper limbs. A high percent of the population studied had abnormalities of the corticospinal tracts on the four limbs at the PEM, without abnormalities in upper limbs by SEPs, showing the correlation between central motor conduction time in upper limbs and the clinical severity of HAM/TSP (p < 0.01). It was not found correlation between time of disease and the results of the SEPs and MEP (p = 0.69).