Dysarthria as the isolated clinical symptom of borreliosis. A case report

This report presents a case of dysarthria due to hypoglossal nerve mononeur opathy as the only consequence of neuroborreliosis. The 65-year-old man wit h a seven-months history of articulation disturbances was examined. The spe ech of the patient was slow and laboured. A slight weakness of the muscles of the tongue (leftside) was observed. The patient suffered from meningitis due to Borrelia burgdorferi infection in 1999 and initially underwent a su ccessful antibiotic treatment. Derailed radiological investigation and psyc hological tests were performed and co-existing neurological diseases were e xcluded. To describe profile of speech abnormalities the dysarthria scale w as designed based on S. J. Robertson Dysarthria Profile. There were a few d isturbances found in self-assessment of speech, intelligibility, articulati on, and prosody but especially in the morphology of the articulation muscle s, diadochokinesis, the reflexes tin the mouth, larynx and pharynx). Needle EMG examination confirmed the diagnosis of mono-neuropathy of left hypoglo ssal nerve. The study confirms the fact that neuroborreliosis may evoke chr onic consequences.