Cerebral Leptomeninges Research Articles

Feline non-suppurative meningoencephalomyelitis. A clinical and pathological study

A spontaneous neurological disease in cats characterized by behavioural and motor disturbances was investigated by clinical, morphological and immunological methods. Neuropathological examination showed a marked inflammatory reaction in the cerebral leptomeninges and the grey matter of the brain. In the white matter, the reaction was moderate. The changes consisted of perivascular cuffing by mononuclear cells and neuronal damage. The brain stem (thalamus, mesencephalon, caudal colliculus) was most severely affected. The spinal cord and its leptomeninges were involved to a lesser degree. The histopathological picture as well as the laboratory findings suggests a viral cause of the disease. The morphology of the disease and serological as well as immunohistochemical results indicate that this disorder is different from previously known feline viral encephalitides.

Metastatic brain tumors induced by injected of syngeneic tumor cells into cerebral circulation in rats.

Adult lewis rats were injected with tissue cultured cells of a transplantable Lewis rat malignant schwannoma (ENU-induced) into the right internal carotid artery, right vertebral artery, the left ventricle of the heart, or the right femoral vein. Groups of animals received injections of 0.5×105; 1.5×105; 5×105; 10×105, or 100×105 viable cells, using each of these routes. In many animals, the injection was followed by development of metastases. Cerebral metastases developed using all three arterial routes. Injections into the carotid or vertebral artery with 5×105–100×105 cells were effective. With each of these routes, leptomeningeal carcinomatosis and perivascular “encephalitic-like” tumor growth were most frequently observed. Focal cerebral microor macrotumors were less common. With intracarotid injection, metastases were located mostly in the cerebral hemispheres and in the cerebral leptomeninges, particularly on the side of injection. Injection into vertebral artery resulted in metastases located mostly in the cerebellum, brain stem, or cerebellar leptomenges. With intracardiac injection, only one rat in 50 developed a single focal brain metastasis, although all these animals developed metastases in other organs. With i.v. injection all rats developed pulmonary metastases, although the total pulmonary tumor burden was conspicuous only with high doses of injected tumor cells. In addition, some of these animals also developed metastases in other internal organs, but the brain was nerver involved. Comparison was made of tumor induction with injection of the same doses of tumor cells by the various routes used.

Progressing Stroke

Progressing strokes were noted in 17 of 256 patients who underwent surgery for atheromatous disease involving the internal carotid artery. This disorder was characterized by an active increase in the neurologic deficit during an 18- to 24-hour period. Although angiographic findings were neither specific for this type of cerebrovascular disease nor uniformly present, the angiography did indicate that not only embolization of the cerebral leptomeningeal conducting vessels but also collaterization through them was a pertinent mechanism.

Sturge-Weber Syndrome

THE Sturge-Weber syndrome is usually easy to recognize. It consists of angiomatosis of the upper portion of the face and the cerebral leptomeninges, with progressive calcification in the underlying cerebral cortex. 1 These abnormalities are usually unilatera l . Atrophy of the involved cerebral hemisphere may be present, along with contralateral hemiparesis, focal seizures, and mental retardation. Buphthalmos or glaucoma may also occur. Information about this unusual condition has been compiled slowly during the past century through individual case reports by many physicians. William Allen Sturge (1850 to 1919) 2 and Frederick Parkes Weber (1863 to 1962 ) 3 were English clinicians whose separate reports, published 43 years apart, illustrated different facets of the syndrome. In 1860, Schirmer 4 published a brief description of a patient with a facial vascular nevus and buphthalmos, but he made no mention of any neurological abnormalities. Then in 1879, at a meeting of the Clinical Society

Primary rhabdomyosarcoma of cerebellum--necropsy report.

A case is reported of primary rhabdomyosarcoma of the cerebellum in a 4-year-old girl. The tumor arose in the cerebellar vermis and metastasized to the cerebellar and basal cerebral leptomeninges. The histogenesis of this tumor is discussed in relation to aberrant differentiation of mesenchyme to striated muscle. Within the nervous system these mesenchymal cells are present in the developing meninges, including the interstitium of the choroid plexus, the perivascular tissue of the pial blood vessels and the lining of the perivascular space.

EXPERIMENTAL TUBERCULOUS MENINGITIS IN RABBITS. 3. SEQUENCE OF HISTOLOGICAL CHANGES FOLLOWING INTRACISTERNAL INFECTION IN SENSITIZED AND NON-SENSITIZED ANIMALS.

Rabbits sensitized by intraperitoneal injections of tubercle bacilli and later showing positive skin reactions to tuberculin, as well as non-sensitized rabbits, were given a single inoculation with live tubercle bacilli into the cisterna magna. The animals' brains were examined histologically, 2 to 27 days following the inoculation, for a comparative study of local reactions and their temporal sequence. It was found that in both sensitized and non-sensitized rabbits the major reactions of the brain were histologically similar in type but differed in intensity, in the time of their appearance and in the intervals between them. These reactions were more severe and, on the whole, slower in appearance in the non-sensitized animals and consisted of phagocytosis of tubercle bacilli by activated local histiocytes, the appearance of acute, non-specific inflammation with components of tissue hypersensitivity, tubercle formation by epithelioid cells and caseation, in that order of sequence. These reactions were evoked not only in the cerebral leptomeninges, but also, and simultaneously, in the perivascular reticular tissue of intracerebral, intraneural and choroid-plexus blood vessels. It thus appears that tuberculous involvement of the brain parenchyma, cranial nerves, ependymal lining and choroid plexuses in tuberculous meningitis may not be a complication but a common manifestation of that process.