The Fahr syndrome and the chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis

Fahr syndrome (FS) refers to basal ganglia calcification that is associated with many neurological and psychiatric abnormalities and appears as secondary to other diseases. We described a case of FS patient who was admitted in the Department of Neurology of "Prof. Dr. Nicolae Oblu" Clinical Emergency Hospital, Iassy, Romania, with seizure and mood disorders. On CT, the cause of seizure was found to be the bilateral calcifications of cerebellum, basal ganglia, thalamus and internal capsule. As the patient died after 15 days of hospitalization due to new seizures and gastrointestinal infection, an autopsy was made. Grossly, there were bilateral symmetrically gritty yellow areas in basal ganglia, thalami, internal capsule, cerebral cortex, cerebellar folia, dentate nucleus, and brain stem. A detailed histopathological examination revealed five types of calcium deposits within the walls of capillaries, small and medium-sized arteries from the intracerebral affected areas, chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis and fibro-adipose tissue instead of parathyroids. We consider that intracerebral symmetrical calcifications were the results of the hypoparathyroidism determined by an ancient autoimmune parathyroiditis that evolved to fibrosis as at microscopy we found an autoimmune thyroiditis.