The contributions to clinical neurology of the axonal excitability property measurements

Nerve excitability measurements are characteristic tests providing informations about the membrane potential and biophysical properties of nerve axons. Recent advances in developing new methods have enabled several such measurements to be made on a nerve quickly, non-invasively, and reproducibly. Modern nerve excitability measurement can give us important informations of some nodal and paranodal sodium and potassium conductances, and it has been applied to clarification of molecular pathophysiology in motor and sensory axons in many diseases. Although nerve excitability measurement is difficult to be applied to the electrophysiological diagnosis of diseases, it has been applied to the electrophysiological therapy evaluations for some motor and sensory symptoms such as muscle clamp or dysesthesia. Furthermore, it is recently reported that it can be utilized as disease survival biomarker in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. I make a brief review of recent advances in the field of clinical applications of nerve excitability measurements.