Opsoclonus myoclonus syndrome in neuroblastoma a report from a workshop on the dancing eyes syndrome at the advances in neuroblastoma meeting in Genoa, Italy, 2004

Opsoclonus-myoclonus syndrome (OMS) is a rare neurologic syndrome that, in children, associates with neuroblastoma in more than half of the cases. The etiology of this condition is thought to be immune mediated, but, though immunosuppressive therapies may ameliorate the acute symptoms, no effective treatment to prevent the common neuropsychologic sequelae has been established. This paper summarizes the results obtained at the 2004 Advances in Neuroblastoma Research meeting, providing status of the art information on immune pathogenesis, clinical features, acute and chronic neurologic manifestations, current and novel therapeutic approaches. It is emphasized that, due to the rarity of OMS in general and neuroblastoma-associated OMS in particular, international collaborations are needed to better define the pathogenesis and therapy of this disease, propose common evaluation criteria and identify new treatment modalities.