Parenchymatous neurosyphilis

PubMed, the Internet portal of biomedical and life sciences literature, indexed an interesting article, entitled “Diffuse cerebral white matter T2-weighted hyperintensity: a new finding of general paresis.” (Acta Radiol. 2006 Jul;47(6):609-11). Authors are Alam F, Yasutomi H, Fukuda H, et al, from the Department of Radiology, Division of Medical Intelligence and Informatics, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan. General paresis (parenchymatous neurosyphilis) is a rare disease, and in recent years the number of papers published on the magnetic resonance imaging findings has been limited. The findings are as follows: cerebral atrophy; mesiotemporal T2 hyperintensity; ventriculomegaly; pathological T2 hypointensity of the globus pallidus, putamen, the head of the caudate nucleus and thalamus. The authors present a new finding, diffuse cerebral white matter T2 hyperintensity, observed in a patient with general paresis with a 5-year history of progressive dementia. To access the abstract of the article, click here.