A girl developed subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). Eight years earlier she had had measles infection contracted shortly after cytotoxic treatment and radiotherapy for a spinal neuroblastoma. The case illustrates that typical SSPE, like immunosuppressive measles encephalopathy, can arise after drug-induced immunosuppression, and supports the view that these diseases probably represent ...

We studied eight children who had measles at 6 to 10 months of age during the 1998 Argentine measles outbreak and in whom subacute sclerosing panencephalitis developed 4 years later. We report the genetic characterization of brain tissue–associated measles virus samples from three patients. Phylogenetic relationships clustered these viruses with the wild-type D6 genotype isolated during the 199...

Frozen brain specimens from patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and other neurologic diseases were analyzed using immunocytochemical techniques for the presence of TNF. In brain lesions in MS, and subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, TNF+ cells were demonstrated. At the lesion site in MS, TNF+ staining is associated with both astrocytes and macrophages. These observations were not made in Alz...

Infections are among the most common causes of seizures. All ages may have seizures due to infections ranging from toxoplasma in the newborn to the Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in the elderly. Seizures may be the only presenting symptom of an infection such as neurocysticercosis or only one symptom of global central nervous system dysfunction, such as in subacute sclerosing panencephalitis and rab...

A difficult case 289 Hypoactive–hypoalert behaviour and thalamic hypometabolism due to intracranial hypotension S Kearney, P Flynn, S Hughes, W Spence, M O McCarron 293 Chorioretinitis: a potential clue to the early diagnosis of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis V Jeevagan, A Dissanayake 297 Acute segmental poliomyelitis-like flaccid paralysis in an adult in the UK, associated with enteroviru...