Progressive supranuclear palsy with widespread cerebral lesions

A 51-year-old woman with no history of any familial neurological diseases initially presented with numbness in her extremities, slowing of movements, comprehension deficit, memory disturbance, dyscalculia, muscle rigidity, hyperreflexia, Parkinsonian gait, increasing disorientation, left-right disturbance, finger agnosia, alexia, acalculia, apraxia, aspontaneity, euphoria, gait disturbance, aphasia, echolalia, and in the terminal stage, mutism, contracture of lower extremities and cachexia. She died of bronchopneumonia at the age of 55. The brain showed widespread cerebral lesions, consisting of nerve cell loss and neurofibrillary tangles in the frontal, parietal and occipital cortex, demyelination and gliosis in the frontal, parietal and occipital subcortical white matter in addition to the typical pathological findings of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP): severe neuronal loss with gliosis and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) in the subthalamic nucleus, globus pallidus and substantia nigra. In conclusion, we present a case of PSP with unusual clinical features (extrapyramidal signs, frontal and parietal lobe syndromes without ophthalmoplegia) and neuropathologically widespread cerebral lesions in addition to the typical pathological findings of PSP. The differential diagnosis of PSP and Alzheimer's disease and other degenerative disorders is discussed.