MR of acute autonomic and sensory neuropathy.

Acute autonom ic and sensory neuropathy was first described by Colan and colleagues in 1980 (1 ). The disease is characterized by autonomic dysfunction and severe sensory deficit with acute onset (2, 3). The disease is rare and is thought to be a variant form of acute pandysautonomia ( 4, 5) and Guillain-Barre syndrome (6) . Pathologically , the abnormality in this disease as found in two autopsied cases was located in the dorsal root ganglia with the secondary degeneration in the posterior column of the spinal cord (7 , 8). In the present study we show the magnetic resonance (MR) findings in the spinal cord of a patient with acute autonomic and sensory neuropathy.