0000000000008501
AUTHOR
Reinhard L. Friede
Myo-, neuro-, gastrointestinal encephalopathy (MNGIE syndrome) due to partial deficiency of cytochrome-c-oxidase
A 42-year-old woman had a 10-year history of external ophthalmoplegia, malabsorption resulting in chronic malnutrition, muscle atrophy and polyneuropathy. Computer tomography revealed hypodensity of her cerebral white matter. A metabolic disturbance consisted of lactic acidosis after moderate glucose loads with increased excretion of hydroxybutyric and fumaric acids. Post-mortem studies revealed gastrointestinal scleroderma as the morphological manifestation of her malabsorption syndrome, ocular and skeletal myopathy with ragged red fibers, peripheral neuropathy, vascular abnormalities of meningeal and peripheral nerve vessels. Biochemical examination of the liver and muscle tissues reveale…
Sural nerve biopsy studies in leigh's subacute necrotizing encephalomyelopathy
Peripheral neuropathy marked by reduced nerve conduction velocities was found in four unrelated children, between the ages of 15 months and 9 years, whose autopsies revealed Leigh's subacute necrotizing encephalomyelopathy. Sural nerve biopsies disclosed primary demyelination and remyelination, as well as loss of myelinated and unmyelinated axons. The use of morphometric and electron microscopic studies shows that these techniques may reveal peripheral neuropathy in Leigh's disease more often than light microscopic methods alone.
A morphometric study on sural nerves in metachromatic leucodystrophy.
This study reexamines peripheral neuropathy in infantile, juvenile and adult metachromatic leuco-dystrophy. A computer-assisted method was used which gives more detailed information on abnormal fibre structure from scatter diagrams of the g ratio (axon diameter/fibre diameter). The data show marked and statistically significant reductions in sheath thickness, particularly for the thick myelinated fibres, and most severe in the juvenile and adult forms. This is interpreted as evidence of remodelling of virtually the entire fibre population, without a clear-cut selectivity for either thin or thick fibres.