Cerebral vasculitis a practical approach

© 2002 Blackwell Science Ltd INTRODUCTION The range and breadth of diseases of the nervous system caused by immunological or infl amma tory disturbances is enormous (Table 1). ‘Primary’ or idiopathic neuroimmune disorders may affect any part of the neuraxis and they are, of course, very familiar to neurologists. ‘Secondary’ disorders, where the neurological disturbance refl ects involvement of the nervous system in a systemic infl ammatory disease, are often no less common than idiopathic neuroimmune disorders, but most neurologists are rather less familiar and possibly less comfortable in dealing with them. Here we confi ne ourselves to the vasculitic disorders, and concentrate only on cerebral disease. The vasculitides are a heterogeneous group of diseases characterised by blood vessel infl ammation, with different but frequently overlapping clinical and pathological manifestations (Watts et al. 1997). The classical histopathologiF G. Joseph and N J. Scolding University of Bristol, Institute of Clinical Neurosciences, Department of Neurology, Frenchay Hospital, Bristol BS16 1LE UK; Email: [email protected] Practical Neurology 2002, 2, 80–93