Marchiafava-Bignami disease with dementia: severe cerebral metabolic depression revealed by PET

The Cerebral Metabolic Rate of Glucose (CMRGlu) was measured with positron emission tomography and 18F-FDG in a patient with Marchiafava-Bignami Disease (MBD)-related dementia. Despite MRI evidence of lesions essentially limited to the corpus callosum (CC), but consistent with the cognitive pattern of cortical dementia, the CMRGlu was markedly reduced in the frontal and temporo-parieto-occipital association cortices. Disruption of cortico-cortical networks crossing the CC presumably contributed to, but may not in and by itself explain, the severity of the clinical-metabolic findings in this patient. An additional role could be played by microscopic white matter lesions and/or neocortical neuronal loss, which have been occasionally observed in post-mortem studies of MBD patients.