First autopsy report of a multiple sclerosis case in Hokuriku District of Japan

The first autopsy of a case of multiple sclerosis from the District of Hokuriku was reported. The patient, a 50-year-old house-wife, born in Toyama Prefecture, had noticed a paresthesia of her face, fatigue, numbness and weakness in the right limbs, dimness of vision and gait disturbance at ave 44. Furthermore, in the course of the disease, she had suffered from visual disorder, tetraplegia, hyperreflexia, pyramidal signs and cerebellar syndroms such as dysarthria, nystagmus, intention tremor and ataxia. She also showed symptoms of euphoria and dementia. After a course of six years she died of bronchopneumonia. Remissions and exacerbations were noted four times during her clinical history. Histopathologically, there were many recent and old demyelinating lesions of varying sizes and shapes in all parts of the central nervous system, namely the cerebrum, brainstem, spinal cord and optic nerve. In contrast to the clinical symptoms, the cerebellum itself revealed less plaques than the other areas of the brain. According to the observed distributions of the lesions, our case can be classified as belonging to the optico-cerebro-spinal type in the Ikuta and Zimmerman classification. The demyelinated lesions were characterized by a perivenular distribution of the plaques, lack of tissue necrosis, paucity of inflammatory reaction and marked fibrous gliosis of varying degrees.