As soon as SSPE develops, it moves through progressive stages, starting with mood changes, personality changes, depression, lethargy and possibly fever and headache. This first phase can take a maximum of six months. Then phase includes two shocking movement, spasms, loss of eyesight, dementia and epileptic seizures. The third phase sees the shocking turn to twist and stiffness. In the final phase, autonomous failure is set in – heart percentage, blood pressure and breathing are not regulated. Then comes coma and death. About 95 percent of the SSPE cases are fatal.
Tragic
In the case of the boy, his parents do not know when he was infected with measles. When doctors saw him, his parents remembered that he had started jerky movements, waterfalls and progressive cognitive decline in the previous six months. Before that he had been healthy at birth and he had hit all his development mile poles.
In some respects his decline was an unmistakable case of SSPE. Imaging showed lesions in his brain. He had an elevated anti-sizes antibodies in his cerebrospinal liquid. An Elektro andcephalography (EEG) showed brain waves consistent with SSPE. Then of course there were the shock movements and the cognitive decline.
However, what stood out were his rolling and swirling eyes. Visie problems are not uncommon with SSPE – sometimes the condition damages the retina and/or optical nerve. Some patients develop full loss of eyesight. But in the case of the boy, he developed fast, repetitive, whimsical, multidirectional eye movements, a condition called Opsoclonus. Doctors often see it in brain cancer patients, but brain inflammation due to some infections can also cause movements. Experts assume that the cause is a loss of specialized neurons involved in coordinated movement, namely Purkinje cells and omnipause cells.
The boy's neurologists believe that this is the first time that Opsoclonus has been caught with SSPE on video. They treated the young with an antiviral medicine and medicines to reduce convulsions, but his condition continued to deteriorate.
