Cerebellar Ataxia Symptoms

Loss of nerve cells, damage or degeneration in the part of brain that controls your muscle coordination also known as the cerebellum, result in ataxia or loss of coordination. Ataxia can be caused by peripheral nerve damage or any diseases that could damage the spinal cord which connects the cerebellum to muscles. Ataxia could affect body movement from the neck area to the hip (middle-part of the body), or the legs and arms (limbs). It could be noticed when the person is sitting, the body can move back and forth, side to side, or both. The body moves quickly to an upright position though. There are some Cerebellar Ataxia symptoms:

• Nystagmus or involuntary rapid rhythmic repetitive eye movements: The patients have abnormal or uncoordinated eye movement, might be horizontal, circular or vertical movements.
• Dysarthria or clumsy speech and swallowing difficulties: Person who have cerebellar ataxia will have slow, slurred, abnormal in rhythm, and indistinct are symptoms for dysarthria or speech problem. The patient could also have difficulties to controlling pitch and volume. Coughing and cocking are sometime result of swallowing difficulties this might come especially with liquids.
• Unsteady gait or walking problems (posture abnormalities): Patients have the difficulty to balance, maintaining normal upright posture, running and coordinated walking. Falling, unsteady gait, unsteadiness on maintaining balance on stairs or on moving platforms (such as boats or escalators), tripping, and staggering, this difficulties are cause by cerebellar dysfunction.
• Fine motor incoordination: The patients have difficulty with cutting food, handwriting, playing an instrument or any sports, sewing, typing, buttoning clothes, or opening jars.
• Truncal and limb ataxia: The patient who have cerebellar ataxia cannot stand or sit, tend to fall backwards or unsupported in truncal symptom, patient might have the tremor caused by a midline cerebral lesion. Poor limb coordination caused by cerebellar hemisphere lesions that could be tested by heel – knee – shin and finger to nose tests.
• Vomiting and nausea problems: Have a sudden vomiting without warning after the patient get a positional change, suddenly nausea, that caused by cerebellar lesions.
• Visual abnormalities: the other cerebellar ataxia symptoms patients have are double vision and blurred vision. Have the difficulty to reading word to word, problems for shifting gaze from an object to another or have following moving objects problems.
• Increased fatigue: this is an unusual cerebellar ataxia symptoms that patients have unexpected fatigue while doing normal activities due to the cerebellar atrophy. Increased fatigue caused by impaired regulation of the coordinated movements.
• Mood and cognitive problems: these problems due to the motor dysfunction, patient with cerebellar ataxia have the difficulty with executive functions like keeping thoughts and making plans, mood and personality disorders just like depression, anxiety, and increased irritability are result of cerebellar ataxia.

The patients symptoms with cerebellar ataxia might vary significantly from person to person or may have symptoms that involve many aspects.

A patient with cerebellar ataxia should stay in close contact with a neurologist, primary physician, psychologist or psychiatrist and with speech, swallowing, speech and occupational therapists so the new problems could be treated and recognized early to reduce the chances of future injury.