Varicella-zoster virus (VZV) vasculopathy in the central nervous system (CNS) affects large and small cerebral vessels. Large-vessel disease is most common in immunocompetent individuals, whereas small-vessel disease usually develops in immunocompromised patients. In some patients, both large and small vessels are involved. Neurological features are protean. Neurological disease often occurs mo...

INTRODUCTION Although rare, the malignant degeneration of epidermoid cysts is well documented. Its occurrence with leptomeningeal dissemination and malignant cells in CSF is scarce. To the best of our knowledge only four cases have been reported. CASE REPORT The authors report the case of malignant transformation of an epidermoid cyst with leptomeningeal carcinomatosis (which simulates asepti...

OBJECTIVES To confirm reduced human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1) burden in the CSF of patients with progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) and to verify whether this viral load coincides with the absence of inflammatory changes in the CSF. METHODS Paired CSF and plasma samples from 17 patients with PML, 26 with non-PML cerebral opportunistic infections, nine with HIV-1 leuk...

BACKGROUND Tuberculous meningitis (TBM) is an important and serious complication of tuberculosis (TB) related to high morbidity and mortality. Childhood TBM is a diagnostic dilemma as the clinical features are non-specific and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) mycobacterial count is low. The diagnosis is made mostly on clinical grounds, CSF analysis and radiological findings and treatment is initiated ...

Myelokathexis is a congenital disorder that causes severe chronic leukopenia and neutropenia. Characteristic findings include degenerative changes and hypersegmentation of mature neutrophils and hyperplasia of bone marrow myeloid cells. The associated neutropenia can be partially corrected by treatment with granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) or granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulati...

INTRODUCTION Sensory chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) can be difficult to diagnose. METHODS We report 22 patients with chronic sensory polyneuropathy with ≥1 clinical sign atypical for chronic idiopathic axonal polyneuropathy (CIAP) but no electrodiagnostic criteria for CIDP. RESULTS Clinical signs atypical for CIAP were: sensory ataxia (59%), generalized areflexia (...

PURPOSE To analyze the characteristics of normal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow waveforms and to relate them to the arterial input and venous output flow waveforms in healthy volunteers. METHODS Cine phase-contrast MR was obtained in 17 volunteers. The temporal velocity information from the cervical pericord CSF spaces, basal cisterns, and aqueduct, as well as the internal carotid and vertebr...

Melancholic depression is a biologically homogeneous clinical entity in which structural brain alterations have been described. Interestingly, reports of structural alterations in melancholia include volume increases in Cerebro-Spinal Fluid (CSF) spaces. However, there are no previous reports of CSF volume alterations using automated whole-brain voxel-wise approaches, as tissue classification a...

BACKGROUND The present study was designed to determine whether the Thinprep plus Papanicolaou stain (Thinprep) method is more sensitive than the Cytospin-coupled Wright-Giemsa (WG) stain (Cytospin) method in diagnosis of leptomeningeal metastasis (LM) from malignant solid tumors in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). We also explored if the Thinprep method could be used in the differential diagnosis of ...

The production of colony-stimulating factors (CSF) is delicately controlled through a complex network of humoral and environmental factors. We have studied some of the mechanisms which regulate the production of CSF as compared to general protein synthesis in the lung tissue ill vitro. When lung tissue from mice was cultured for various times in serum free medium, the first detectable le...