Selective injury of the globus pallidus in children with post-cardiac surgery choreic syndrome

Occasionally children undergoing cardiac surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass with deep hypothermia and cardiac arrest develop a postoperative syndrome of acute chorea. The authors report the neuropathological findings in two such children surgically treated for congenital heart disease. Examination of the brain showed neuronal loss, reactive astrocytosis and degeneration of myelinated fibers (without frank necrosis) in the globus pallidus, primarily the outer segment, with sparing of other regions commonly susceptible to hypoxic-ischemic necrosis. The localization and relative mildness of the brain damage suggest a susceptibility of the globus pallidus to injury in this setting and implicate disruption of pallidal pathways in the pathogenesis of post-cardiac surgery choreic syndrome.

An investigation of the HUMVWA31A locus in British Caucasians

A number of short tandem repeat (STR) loci are currently being examined for their usefulness as markers of identity; HUMVWA31A is one such locus. We used a high-sieving agarose technique to type 200 British Caucasians for this locus. Comparison of the resultant allele frequencies with other published databases showed that their distributions were similar. Observed heterozygosity was similar to that reported in other population studies but significantly lower than expected. A goodness of fit analysis of observed and expected genotypes was highly significant, suggesting a deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, although reports from other populations appeared not to show such differences. The possibility that mistyping had led to an erroneous statistic was investigated by detailed examination of samples within our own laboratory and in two other laboratories, involving verification of the agarose typing by both automated fluorescent detection techniques, and sequencing. Other reported deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in STR systems are discussed.