Abstracts of papers presented at the thirty-eighth annual meeting of the Japanese Teratology Society

✍ Scribed by Watanabe, Myrna E.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 112 KB
• Volume: 59
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0040-3709
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1096-9926(199905)59:5<16a::aid-tera6>3.0.co;2-#

✦ Synopsis

Tokyo. Neuropathological Evaluation of the Diencephalon, Basal Ganglia and Upper Brainstem in Alobar Holoprosencephaly.

Generally, in alobar holoprosencephaly (HPE), the bilateral diencephalon and basal ganglia are fused, and they tend to intermingle with the upper brainstem. Therefore, their detailed neuropathological analysis has not been fully investigated. We immunohistologically examined in situ expression of vasopressin, neurotransmitters, and calcium binding proteins in four female cases with alobar HPE, who aged 1 day, 4 months, 6 months and 1 year, respectively, and age-matched controls. Vasopressin-immunoreactive neurons were detected in the 4-months-old case, and seemed to clump in the 1-year-old case. Tyrosine hydroxylase-immunoreactive fibers and neurons were observed in the basal ganglia-and midbrain-like structures, respectively, in all cases. Immunoreactivity for methionine-enkephalin and parvalbumin were found only in the 1-year-old case. These data suggest that the jumbled basal ganglia, diencephalon and midbrain showed a functional development even in alobar HPE, and expression of vasopressin in the diencephalon seemed to be retarded as compared with controls.