In a post-mortem series of 57 SSc patients histological liver damage was found in 8.8% of cases [ 5].
In this post-mortem series of patients with mainly long histories of drug-resistant epilepsy, we have confirmed age-accelerated tau-protein accumulation.
In a post-mortem series of 138 patients with long-term, mainly drug-resistant epilepsy, we carried out Braak staging for Alzheimer's disease neurofibrillary pathology using tau protein immunohistochemistry.
Comparing the age distribution in our series with a previous published large post-mortem series of 2661 cases of a general autopsy practice (Braak and Braak, 1997), a relative over-representation of young to middle age adults was noted (age range 30 50) (Fig. 1A).
This is perhaps surprising, as large post-mortem series on the subject mention syrinx formation as not infrequent in fetal, neonatal and paediatric Chiari II malformations [ 14, 15] and there is an ultrasound report of detection of syringomyelia in a pre-term fetus [ 16], although a large radiological series demonstrates detection by MRI be very unusual and late in gestation [ 17].
> The incidence of CAE ranges from 0.2%to10%0% [ 2, 10, 19, 26, 38, 65, 74, 81, 82, 86] with the largest ante mortem series found in the Coronary Artery Surgery Study (CASS) registry (4.9% of 20 087 patients referred for coronary angiography) [ 82].
Central nervous system (CNS) involvement is reported in 25%% of cases at autopsy; in a post-mortem series, neural sarcoidosis was detected with a frequency of 14 27 % [51, 52, 53, 54].
The prevalence of hippocampal sclerosis in non-epilepsy elderly post-mortem series is ∼16% (Dickson et al., 1994) and is bilateral in 50% of these (Zarow et al., 2008).
49 The value of proton MRS as a biomarker has also been assessed ante mortem in a series of 54 patients ranging from a low to high likelihood of having AD and those who underwent an autopsy.
This margin is based on biopsy and post-mortem series, and is large enough to encompass the maximum extent of invasion seen in (almost) any patient (see Fig. 4).
