Pyrrhus
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I thought I would start a thread to summarize any and all autopsy findings from ME patients. Please feel free to share any relevant case reports, anecdotes, and studies. I'll start this thread with one of the earliest reports of autopsies in ME patients:
Autopsies from the 1955 Royal Free Outbreak (Crowley et al., 1957)
From:
Epidemiological aspects of an outbreak of encephalomyelitis at the Royal Free in the summer of 1955.
Crowley N, Nelson M, Stouin S., J Hygiene. 1957;55:116.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC2217874/pdf/jhyg00143-0110.pdf
Autopsies from the 1955 Royal Free Outbreak (Crowley et al., 1957)
From:
Epidemiological aspects of an outbreak of encephalomyelitis at the Royal Free in the summer of 1955.
Crowley N, Nelson M, Stouin S., J Hygiene. 1957;55:116.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC2217874/pdf/jhyg00143-0110.pdf
Post-mortem tissue was examined from two further cases, both of whom had died from other causes several months after an attack of the epidemic disease. One of these fatal cases showed an ovarian carcinoma with multiple metastases and a terminal clostridial peritonitis and septicaemia. Microscopic examination of the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves showed no abnormality except for that attributable to either the septicaemia or carcinomatosis.
The second fatality, due to acute carbrital poisoning, occurred in a woman, aged 32, who had the epidemic disease 7 months before death and who had had definite clinical evidence of organic disease of the central nervous system for the last 7 months of her life. Post-mortem examination revealed small, circumscribed, grey or yellowish plaques in the white matter of the cerebral hemispheres, mainly para-ventricular in distribution, in the brain stem and in the spinal cord, particularly in the cervical segment.
Microscopic examination showed multiple, small, well, or fairly well, demarcated areas of demyelination with associated microglial and astrocytic proliferation and a variable degree of gliosis. There was no evidence of primary neuronal damage and no viral cell-inclusions were seen. Occasional cellular foci composed of lymphocytes and cerebral histiocytes, mainly perivascular in distribution, were present in the leptomeninges overlying the brain, but this was not a marked feature except in one section taken from the hypothalamus which showed intense perivascular cuffing.