Abstract
Motor unit number estimation (MUNE) methods are useful for monitoring the loss of anterior horn cells in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). They seem to reflect the course of the disease more sensitively than clinical scores or neurophysiological standard methods, but are much more time consuming. The latter is not the case with a recently proposed method, the measurement of the ...
Abstract
Motor unit number estimation (MUNE) methods are useful for monitoring the loss of anterior horn cells in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). They seem to reflect the course of the disease more sensitively than clinical scores or neurophysiological standard methods, but are much more time consuming. The latter is not the case with a recently proposed method, the measurement of the motor unit number index (MUNIX). As the underlying principle of this method is not intuitively clear, we here attempt to give a comprehensive explanation of it. Studies of MUNIX in patients with ALS have shown that MUNIX has a similar sensitivity as MUNE to monitor disease progression. Yet, it is not sufficiently clear if the MUNIX in fact reflects the number of vital anterior horn cells or if there are other factors, such as loss of upper motor neurons, have a considerable influence on the MUNIX.
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