Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis

Abstract

Recent electronmicroscopic and immunologic studies in subacute sclerosing panencephalitis suggest that the disease represents either a chronic but active infectious measles encephalitis or an immune response to the protracted presence of measles virus in cerebral tissue. Usually, it is inexorably progressive to death. By contrast, in a well documented case followed for over five years since onset of symptoms, striking improvement has been noted during the past three years with no treatment. Antibody titers to measles virus were markedly elevated in the serum in 1963 and remained elevated in serum and cerebrospinal fluid in late 1967, despite the clinical remission. Attempts to transmit the disease to animals were unsuccessful. The pronounced and prolonged elevation of antimeasles antibodies suggests a possible etiologic relation between the virus and this patient's illness and is of special interest in the light of the occurrence of slow-virus infections in the nervous systems of animals and possibly of man.