ENCEPHALITIS AND ENCEPHALOMYELITIS IN MEASLES

Abstract

Nervous complications following measles were known more than a century ago, but the first pathologic report (Barlow and Penrose¹) dates from 1886. The authors described a case of paraplegia occurring a few days after the appearance of the measles rash. Histologically, the cord showed that the changes were entirely vascular. There was great enlargement of the vessels, most of the veins being many times their normal caliber and crammed with corpuscles. Many vessels were surrounded by a zone of coagulated exudation, and beyond this for a considerable distance the surrounding tissue was infiltrated with leukocytes, giving the appearance in transverse sections of cells in concentric rings. Since then, other reports have appeared in the literature dealing with nervous complications of measles. Some authors have considered the clinical aspect of the disease and others the pathologic aspect. In some cases, lesions of both the brain and the spinal cord were