By Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay Reporter. SUNDAY, Feb. 9, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Cat bites may look less serious than dog bites, but beware: They can cause dangerous infections, particularly when they involve the hand, new research indicates.
Donate to the National Ataxia Foundation. Causes of Ataxia. The hereditary ataxias are genetic, which means they are caused by a defect in a certain gene that is present from the start of a person's life. All of us have genes that have little mistakes or variations but most of these do not cause disease, they are called mutations.
The ataxia of Friedreich's ataxia results from the degeneration of nervous tissue in the spinal cord, in particular sensory neurons essential (through connections with the cerebellum) for directing muscle movement of the arms and legs.riedreich's ataxia is an autosomal recessive disorder that occurs when the FXN gene contains amplified intronic GAA repeats (an example of Trinucleotide repeat expansion). The FXN gene encodes the protein frataxin.