[The cerebrospinal fluid concentrations of beta-glucuronidase and beta 2-microglobulin in neurological disorders]

beta-Glucuronidase (beta-GL) and beta 2-microglobulin (beta 2-m) of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) were assayed from the patients with various neurological diseases, in order to evaluate the difference of mean value of these enzyme activities in several groups of neurological diseases, diagnostic usefulness for one of the central nervous system tumor markers, and the usefulness to differentiate carcinomatous meningitis from infectious meningitides. The subjects were 99 patients with various neurological diseases, and these were classified in the following eight diagnostic groups, central nervous system degenerative diseases (6 cases), cervical spondylotic radiculomyelopathy (15 cases), Guillain-Barre syndrome (8 cases), subarachnoid hemorrhage secondary to ruptured aneurysm (6 cases), infectious meningitides (21 cases), carcinomatous meningitis (9 cases), metastatic extradural spinal cord tumors (10 cases) and brain tumors (24 cases). CSF was also obtained from 13 subjects without any known neurological diseases for beta-GL and beta 2-m as the normal control values. beta-GL and beta 2-m were measured by Tsukamoto's method and the radioimmunoassay method (Phadebas, beta 2-m test) respectively. The statistical analyse were done by using the student t-test and expressed as p values. In the normal control group of 13 individuals without any obvious neurological diseases, the mean values +/- standard error of means (SEM) of beta-GL and beta 2-m were 122.5 +/- 10.8 micrograms/dl/hr, and 0.99 +/- 0.15 mg/l respectively.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)