What are Movement Disorders?
Movement Disorders are conditions characterized by abnormal form or timing of voluntary movement in individuals with normal strength and sensation. These conditions are caused by dysfunction of the cerebellum and basal ganglia, which are the systems devoted to implementation of motor plans developed in the cortex. There are three main categories:
- Hypokinetic – characterized by slow movement, rigidity, and rest tremor (e.g. parkinsonism).
- Hyperkinetic – characterized by involuntary movements that intrude into the normal flow of motor acts (e.g. dystonia and chorea).
- Ataxic – characterized by lack of speed and skill performing movements requiring coordination of several muscles.
Movement Disorder Tests We Offer
The MNG portfolio of comprehensive and targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) panels offers a complete set of molecular diagnostic tests to diagnose these conditions. Our NGS panels include testing for repeat expansions, single-exon resolution copy number gain/loss, single-nucleotide variants (nuclear and mitochondrial), and mitochondrial genome deletions.
Ataxia Panel Comparison
|Company||# of Genes||# of Known Pathogenic Variants||mtDNA Included||TAT||Del/Dup Included||STAT Available|
|Blueprint Genetics||141||3,105||21-28 Days|
|Athena||42||1,203||21-28 Days||ATM only|
For dystonia patients, we offer a Comprehensive Dystonia panel, which also includes complimentary mtDNA sequencing with deletion analysis. For a more targeted approach, we offer early-onset Primary Dystonia and OXPHOS Defect Dystonia panels.
Parkinson’s Disease Testing
Parkinson’s disease affects more than 10 million people worldwide. In the United States alone, more than 50,000 people will be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease this year. Though primarily a movement disorder, the progressive neural degeneration caused by Parkinson’s results in a wide-range of neurological symptoms ranging from dementia, anxiety, and depression. Our Parkinson’s Disease/Parkinsonism panel is designed to target Parkinson’s disease and other disorders that have partially overlapping symptomatology to ensure accurate and sensitive diagnostics for your patients.
MNG Laboratories is committed to a patient-centered testing menu, high-quality diagnostics, and first-in-class reporting driven by our Genome MaNaGer® analysis pipeline. Our Neurogenetic Answers™ reporting process helps us stay at the forefront of the evolving genetics field with our regularly-updated NGS panels. Our team-based approach to variant assessment ensures we provide you with the variants that cause or are likely to cause disease and keep the number of variants of unknown significance to a minimum. Our comprehensive approach to diagnostics is accompanied by a team of customer support and scientific personnel available to answer your questions regarding our process, technology, and reports. Please contact us to learn more about how we may serve you and your patients.