Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0007758 (cerebellar ataxia)
 3,609 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Three siblings with inhaled elemental mercury toxicity are described, and the signs and symptoms of mercury toxicity, interpretation of mercury concentrations, and management of elemental mercury exposure are reviewed. A 4-year-old girl was admitted to the hospital with a history of fever and increasing irritability, fatigue, malaise, insomnia, headache, anorexia, and ataxia. She was discharged two days later with a diagnosis of acute cerebellar ataxia. During the following 18 days, the child's condition worsened, and she was rehospitalized. Meanwhile her 11-year-old sister was hospitalized for evaluation of fatigue, weakness, lower back pain, and ataxia. The older girl's blood mercury concentration, at 5.5 micrograms/dL, was in the toxic range. Twenty-four-hour urine mercury screening confirmed mercury intoxication in both children. Questioning revealed that the girls' brother had recently spilled 0.5-1 oz of elemental mercury in the house. All family members underwent blood and urine mercury testing. The brother underwent a dimercaprol challenge to determine his tissue mercury burden, which was found to be greater than 2.4 micrograms/dL. The sisters underwent two courses of chelation therapy with dimercaprol. Symptoms persisted in all three children, and they underwent five 10-day cycles of N-acetyl-D,L-penicillamine (NAP) therapy; the youngest underwent a third dimercaprol regimen. All siblings continued NAP chelation therapy because of extensive tissue mercury burden until the results of repeated urine mercury concentration determinations were normal.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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PMID:Elemental mercury poisoning. 174 59

Malignant mesothelioma is an uncommon neoplasia which primarily involves the pleura or peritoneum. Central nervous system involvement is rare. A rare presentation of metastatic pleural mesothelioma, which had infiltrated the meninges and brainstem, is described. The patient presented with diplopia following a 2-week history of malaise, myalgia, mild headache and diarrhoea. Clinical examination found global areflexia, cerebellar ataxia and bilateral sixth nerve palsies. Differential diagnoses included the Miller-Fisher variant of Guillain-Barre syndrome, malignant meningitis and infectious meningitis. The patient was treated with immunoglobulins, plasmaphoresis and corticosteroids; however, he deteriorated and died 31 days after admission. Retrospective examination of the MRI of the brain found diffuse low attenuation changes within the pons and cerebral peduncles. Postmortem examination favoured a diagnosis of an early sarcomatoid malignant mesothelioma of pleural origin with leptomeningeal metastatic deposits.
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PMID:Meningeal and brainstem infiltration by a malignant mesothelioma. 2279 48