A child with an absent pons is described who died 8 weeks after birth. At postmortem examination, the defect was consistent with a vascular event in the last trimester.

Basilar Artery↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Immunization against whooping cough: a neuropathological review.

The neuropathological aspects of vaccination against pertussis have been analysed. This has been done partly by considering the previous literature and partly by searching for data on any child whose death since 1960 has been thought to have a possible relationship to the vaccination. Twenty-nine in due course were identified on whom a post-mortem examination had been made. Eighteen had died within 3 weeks of inoculation - the remaining eleven had survived the initial illness but had remained retarded, epileptic and disabled. Although a variety of cerebral abnormalities were found, neither those recorded in the present study nor those abstracted from previous case reports, have demonstrated a recurring pattern of inflammatory or other damage which could be accepted as a specific reaction to immunization against whooping cough. Those reactive changes that were occasionally found appear to be indistinguishable from those seen in many other infantile encephalopathies occurring as the result of a hypoxic/ischaemic state supervening on a complex of respiratory complications, fever and convulsions.

Acute Disease↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Persistent mercury in nerve cells 16 years after metallic mercury poisoning.

A male subject, after exposure to mercury metal at work in 1968, developed classical signs of mercurialism from which he made a slow clinical recovery. He subsequently developed psychoneurotic symptoms and became an alcoholic; he never returned to work and died in 1984. No histological changes relevant to mercury intoxication were found in the brain, but staining by Danscher & Schroeder's method for mercury showed many positively staining lysosomal dense bodies in a large proportion of nerve cells, and the presence of mercury was confirmed by elemental X-ray analysis. The mercury content of the brain was increased, much of it being present in colloidal form.

Brain↗