Pelizaeus-Merzbacher-like disease: female case report

Brain Dev. 1996 Mar-Apr;18(2):114-8. doi: 10.1016/0387-7604(95)00078-x.

Abstract

We experienced a 15-year-old female, whose healthy parents were second cousins, who was suspected of having dysmyelinating disease involving only the central nervous system (CNS). She was noticed to have congenital pendula nystagmus, and spastic gait disturbance developed at the age of 10 years. Mild athetosis of the upper limbs and ataxia were recognized at age 13 years, and dysarthria presented at age 15. MRI and electrophysiological findings showed the characteristics of Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD), although the extensive nerve conduction slowing of the CNS was less severe than that in male patients with PMD. No promoter or exonic mutations of proteolipid protein (PLP) gene were detected. Although this patient might be heterozygous for a mutation of the extraexonic PLP gene sequences or of other unknown X-linked PLP associated genes, we speculate that this case had a dysmyelinating disease with an autosomal recessive trait characterized by the same phenotype as that of PMD.

Publication types

  • Case Reports

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Brain / pathology
  • Demyelinating Diseases / genetics*
  • Demyelinating Diseases / pathology
  • Demyelinating Diseases / physiopathology
  • Electrooculography
  • Evoked Potentials / physiology
  • Exons / physiology
  • Female
  • Genetic Linkage / physiology
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Magnetoencephalography
  • Myelin Proteins / genetics*
  • Myelin Proteins / metabolism
  • X Chromosome / physiology

Substances

  • Myelin Proteins