Women's Neurology

Abstract

This chapter reviews some of the features important to consider in women with neurologic disease, including medication and disease effects on both reproductive health and pregnancy/fetal development, as well as hormonal effects on neurologic disease. A case-based approach is used to discuss diseases that affect women throughout their life cycle (multiple sclerosis [MS] and epilepsy), disorders that affect only women (eclampsia), and those that affect women preferentially (migraine, cerebral venous thrombosis, reversible cerebral vasospasm, and Alzheimer disease). The epidemiology, differential diagnosis, pathophysiology, management, and prognosis are reviewed for each disorder. Tables include US Food and Drug Administration pharmaceutical pregnancy categories, learning objectives, migraine with aura, alternative diagnostic criteria for migraine without aura, migraine aura versus transient ischemic attacks, red flags to secondary headache, abortive headache therapy in pregnancy, migraine preventive medications and pregnancy, MS therapies in pregnancy, pregnancy consulting points for MS patients on a disease-modifying therapy, and general recommendations for women with epilepsy and pregnancy. Figures show fluid-attenuated inversion recovery and gradient echo magnetic resonance images of the right anterior parietal region; a magnetic resonance venogram demonstrating occlusion in the superior sagittal sinus; posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome; and computed tomographic (CT) images of a hemorrhage in the left parietal region, left frontal subarachnoid bleeding, and left middle cerebral beading. This chapter contains 5 highly rendered figures, 11 tables, 29 references, and 5 MCQs.