Amyotrophic cerebellar hypoplasia: a specific form of infantile spinal atrophy

Lower motor neuron degeneration, cerebellar hypoplasia, atrophy of pons, olives, and cerebellum, sclerosis of thalamus and pallidum, and deficient myelination were found in a 2-months-old baby with laryngeal paralysis, mental retardation, progressive amyotrophy, and slow nerve conduction velocity. Such changes seem characteristic of an unusual syndrome previously referred to as "cerebellar hypoplasia in Werdnig-Hoffmann disease", or "anterior horn cell disease with pontocerebellar hypoplasia". Although the pathologic changes in lower motor neurons are indistinguishable from those in other cases of infantile spinal muscular atrophy, the consistent reproducibility of a complex pathologic pattern suggests that this is probably a manifestation of a separate disease process. The term "amyotrophic cerebellar hypoplasia" (ACH) is a convenient designation for the syndrome.