Alexander Disease Without White Matter Lesions

Imaging of white matter lesions.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is very sensitive for the detection of white matter lesions (WML), which occur even in normal ageing. Intrinsic WML should be separated from physiological changes in the ageing brain, such as periventricular caps and bands, and from dilated Virchow-Robin spaces. Genuine WML are best seen with T2-weighted sequences such as long TR dual-echo spin-echo or FLAIR (fl...

Can Nonenhancing White Matter Lesions Be Disregarded?

In this issue of AJNR (1), Drs Elster and Chen pose a provocative question that has certainly given us pause as we routinely dismiss a large nonenhancing white matter lesion in a cancer patient. It was with relief that we read the conclusion that white matter lesions in cancer patients that do not enhance with gadolinium-DTPA at the time of the initial MR study have a low probability of represe...

Cerebral white matter lesions, retinopathy, and stroke.

and Stroke To the Editor: I read with interest the study by Vermeer and colleagues1 on the risk of stroke associated with MRI-defined white matter lesions (WML) in the Rotterdam Scan Study. As cerebral MRI becomes a routine diagnostic test for widening indications of neurological disorders, this study provides further data on the clinical significance of these lesions in asymptomatic elderly pe...

Significance of age-related white matter lesions.

Vanishing White Matter Disease

Vanishing white matter disease 1 (VWM) is a puzzling leukoencephalopathy caused by mutations in any of the five genes encoding eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2B (eIF2B), an ubiquitously expressed protein complex with a crucial role in initiation of mRNA translation for virtually every protein in the human body. VWM is one of the most prevalent inherited childhood white matter disorder...