Acute posterior leukoencephalopathy in a patient with nephrotic syndrome.

Reversible posterior leukoencephalopathy syndrome is one of the most serious complications of immunosuppressive therapy. The clinical features include headache, altered mental functioning, seizures, cortical blindness and other visual disturbances, with hypertension. The neuroimaging studies reveal predominant posterior leukoencephalopathy. Usually, antihypertensive therapy and reduction or withdrawal of immunosuppressive agents have been reported to resolve the neurological deficits and imaging abnormalities within a few weeks. We discuss here a 51-year-old woman with nephrotic syndrome who developed acute leukoencephalopathy during combination therapy with prednisolone and cyclosporine. She developed severe headache, visual disturbance, consciousness disturbance, and generalized tonic clonic convulsion. A computed tomography scan (CT) revealed low-density areas in the subcortices of the parietal and occipital lobes. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) disclosed a high signal intensity area on T2-weighted images and a low signal intensity area on T1-weighted images in the same lesions. Follow-up brain CT and MRI were performed several times. Three weeks after the first study, these lesions had completely resolved, but she had persistent altered consciousness for more than 1 year.