An autopsy case report of adult-onset Krabbe disease: Comparison with an infantile-onset case.

Krabbe disease is a lysosomal storage disease caused by a deficiency of the galactocerebrosidase (GALC) enzyme, which leads to demyelination of the central and peripheral nervous systems. Almost all patients with Krabbe disease are infants, and this is the first report of adult-onset cases that describe pathological findings. Here, we present two autopsy cases: a 73-year-old female and a 2-year-old male. The adult-onset case developed symptoms in her late thirties and was diagnosed by the identification of GALC D528N and L634S mutations and by T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging; she had increased signal in the white matter along the pyramidal tract to the bilateral precentral gyrus, as well as from the triangular part to the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle. Microscopically, Klüver-Barrera staining was pale in the white matter of the precentral gyrus and occipito-thalamic radiation, and a few globoid cells were observed. The GALC mutations that were identified in the present adult-onset case do not completely inactivate GALC enzyme activity, resulting in focal demyelination of the brain.

Emergence of artistic talent in progressive nonfluent aphasia: a case report.

Some patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration have developed artistic skills after the onset mainly in painting and music. Most of these cases have semantic dementia (SD), one of the frontotemporal lobar degeneration subtypes. In previously reported cases, the paintings made by patients with SD were usually hyper realistic, without a significant symbolic or abstract component. Here, we report on a patient with progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA), another frontotemporal lobar degeneration subtype, who started making creative bamboo crafts after PNFA onset. His techniques were completely his original; he devised the shapes of the crafts and made them without samples. His work did not become an obsessive preoccupation. The artistic style expressed by patients with PNFA differs from that expressed by patients with SD. Therefore, the underlying mechanisms for the emergence of artistic talent might differ between SD and PNFA.

[A case of cerebral syphilitic gumma mimicking a brain tumor].

We report a case of young immunocompetent woman who was presented with a left parieto-temporal mass as the first and single manifestation of syphilis. A 23 year-old woman with no significant past medical history was reffered to our hospital due to 3 month history of headache. She had a single unprotected sexual intercourse with a promiscuous man 6 month before the time of admission. Physical and neurological examinations revealed no obvious abnormalities. A brain tumor was firstly suggested according to the findings of brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). However, the serologic and cerebrospinal fluid test of syphilis proved to be positive, syphilitic gumma was most likely suspected. She responded dramatically to benzylpenicillin potassium. Cerebral syphilitic gumma is a rare manifestations of the neurosyphilis. Treponemal invasion of the cerebrospinal fluid occurs in approximately 25 to 60% of patients after the infection, but most cases spend asymptomatic. Cerebral gumma should be considered in differential diagnosis of any intracranial mass lesions, even in the early syphilitic stages.