Neurology is a broad specialty covering a staggering variety of diseases. Some neurological disorders are vanishingly rare, but many are household names, or at least vaguely familiar to most people. These are the diseases which define neurology. Here, in alphabetical order, is my list of the top 60 iconic neurological diseases, with links to previous blog posts where available.
1. Alzheimer’s disease
![By uncredited - Images from the History of Medicine (NLM) [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11648572](https://theneurologylounge.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/alois_alzheimer_002.jpg)
2. Behcet’s disease
3. Bell’s palsy
4. Brachial neuritis
5. Brain tumours
6. Carpal tunnel syndrome
7. Cerebral palsy (CP)
8. Cervical dystonia
9. Charcot Marie Tooth disease (CMT)
10. Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP)
11. Cluster headache
12. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD)
13. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD)
14. Encephalitis
15. Epilepsy
16. Essential tremor
17. Friedreich’s ataxia
18. Frontotemporal dementia (FTD)
19. Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS)
20. Hashimoto encephalopathy
21. Hemifacial spasm
22. Horner’s syndrome
23. Huntington’s disease (HD)
24. Idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH)
25. Inclusion body myositis (IBM)
26. Kennedy disease
27. Korsakoff’s psychosis
28. Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS)
29. Leber’s optic neuropathy (LHON)
30. McArdles disease
31. Meningitis
32. Migraine
33. Miller-Fisher syndrome (MFS)
34. Motor neurone disease (MND)
35. Multiple sclerosis (MS)
36. Multiple system atrophy (MSA)
37. Myasthenia gravis (MG)
38. Myotonic dystrophy
39. Narcolepsy
40. Neurofibromatosis (NF)
41. Neuromyelitis optica (NMO)
42. Neurosarcoidosis
43. Neurosyphilis
44. Parkinson’s disease (PD)
45. Peripheral neuropathy (PN)
46. Peroneal neuropathy
47. Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP)
48. Rabies
49. Restless legs syndrome (RLS)
50. Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA)
51. Stiff person syndrome (SPS)
52. Stroke
53. Subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH)
54. Tension-type headache (TTH)
55. Tetanus
56. Transient global amnesia (TGA)
57. Trigeminal neuralgia
58. Tuberous sclerosis
59. Wernicke’s encephalopathy
60. Wilson’s disease
![By Carl Vandyk (1851–1931) - [No authors listed] (July 1937). "S. A. Kinnier Wilson". Br J Ophthalmol 21 (7): 396–97. PMC: 1142821., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11384670](https://theneurologylounge.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/samuel_alexander_kinnier_wilson.jpg)
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The Neurology Lounge has a way to go to address all these diseases, but they are all fully covered in neurochecklists. In a future post, I will look at the rare end of the neurological spectrum and list the 75 strangest and most exotic neurological disorders.
Excellent, the list is however inclined to Western diseases. Tropical diseases!
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Dear Hamidu. I have to disagree here. Almost all the diseases in the list are prevalent in the tropics e.g. migraine, epilepsy, GBS, MND, Bell’s palsy, carpal tunnel syndrome, brachial neuritis, etc, etc. Even diseases like Alzheimer’s are now important in the tropics. I guess you would like to see included diseases such as TB, HIV, cysticercosis etc (which by the way are all covered in neurochecklists!). These all happen to be iconic infectious diseases that affect the nervous system secondarily; I excluded them because they do not, by themselves, define neurology. Ibrahim
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