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Pseudoathetosis: Report of Three Patients Mariana Spitz, MD, * Alexandre Aluı ´zio Costa Machado, MD, Rodrigo do Carmo Carvalho, MD, Fernanda Martins Maia, MD, Monica Santoro Haddad, M Dagoberto Calegaro, MD, Milberto Scaff, MD, and Egberto Reis Barbosa, MD Neurology Department, University of Sa˜o Paulo Medical School, Sa˜o Paulo, Brazil Abstract: We reporton 3 patients with pseudoathetosis, which are involuntary, slow,writhing movements due to loss of proprioception. © 2006 Movement Disorder Society Key words: pseudoathetosis; sensoryloss; involuntary movements Athetosis is characterized by an inability to retain finger and toes in a position in which they are placed and by their continual motion. 1 The term comes from the Greek word athetosis, meaning “without fixed position” and was first used by Hammond in 1881. 2 Dooling and Ad- ams 3 introduced the term pseudoathetosis to refer to a movementdisorderconsistingofinvoluntary, slow, writhing movements, clinically indistinguishable from athetosis, butdue to loss of proprioception, whereas in true athetosis there is no sensory loss. The lesions re- sponsible for pseudoathetosis may be located anywhere along the sensory pathways, from peripheral nerve to parietalcortex, includingposteriorcolumns and thalamus. 2,4,5 There are a few reports of pseudoathetosis in literatur published in English in the last 3 decades. 5 Pseudoath- etosis has been described in association with multiple sclerosis, myelitis, 4 leprosy, 6 stroke, 7,8 vitamin B12 de- ficiency, 9 spinalcord infarct, trauma, tumors, syringo- myelia, 5 and central pontine myelinolysis. 10 We herein describe three cases of patients admitted to our service that were diagnosed with pseudoathetosis. This article includes Supplementary Video, available online at http:/ www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/0885-3185/suppmat *Correspondence to: Dr. Mariana Spitz, Rua Paulo Ce´sar de An- drade, 200/apto 402, Laranjeiras, Rio de Janeiro 22221-090, Brazil. E-mail: marianaspitz@hotmail.com Received 5 October 2005;Revised 1 January 2006; Accepted 24 January 2006 Published online 30 June 2006 in Wiley InterScience (www. interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/mds.21014 1520 M. SPITZ ET AL. Movement Disorders, Vol.21,No.9, 2006