Clinical manifestations of Borrelia infections of the nervous system.

Clinical, treatment and laboratory parameters were analyzed in 46 consecutive Swedish patients with Borrelia infections of the nervous system. The importance of age in the clinical symptoms, the wide spectrum of disease, and the chronic behaviour of the Borrelia infection of the nervous system was stressed, as well as the benefit of high-dose intravenous antibiotics, especially penicillin G. Borrelia infection of the nervous system can imitate other diseases.

Chronic meningitis and Lyme disease in Sweden.

We studied 35 patients with chronic meningitis. The neurological abnormalities included aseptic meningitis, cranial neuropathy (mostly facial palsy), motor and sensory peripheral radiculoneuropathy, and myelitis. Neurological symptoms were sometimes preceded by erythema chronicum migrans or an insect bite and were often accompanied by fever, malaise, profound fatigue, and weight loss.

Chronic meningitis caused by a penicillin-sensitive microorganism?

21 patients studied had persistent or progressive chronic meningitis not associated with a demonstrable infectious or other disease, except Streptococcus milleri antigen in the cerebrospinal fluid of 1 patient. The cerebrospinal-fluid (CSF) abnormalities consisted of a moderate, predominantly mononuclear, pleocytosis, a sharp rise in CSF protein (mean 2.3 g/l), intrathecal synthesis of considerable quantities of oligoclonal immunoglobulin G, and, in half the patients, a fall in the CSF-glucose/blood-glucose ratio.

A T lymphocyte subpopulation in multiple sclerosis patients bearing Fc receptors for both IgG and IgM1.

Abnormally low proportions of total T lymphocytes were found in peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) accompanied by high proportions of T lymphocytes with Fc receptors (FcR) for IgG (T gamma cells). Seventy-five percent of the MS patients had greater than 40% T gamma in the T lymphocyte-enriched population. In 6 out of 16 cases, T mu were also elevated.