A 54-year-old male with rapidly progressive neurologic syndrome: Clinicopathologic correlation of a rare diagnosis

Abstract

Diagnosis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) as primary presentation with central nervous system involvement as a rapidly progressive neurologic syndrome is extremely rare. We present a rare case of a 54-year-old hypertensive male patient, who presented with a fulminant neurologic syndrome. He presented with cerebellar and meningeal signs, aseptic meningitis and had a rapid downhill course following admission. A postmortem revealed feature of systemic connective tissue fulfilling diagnostic criteria of SLE with lupus cerebritis.

Keywords

• Chronic meningoencephalitis
• systemic lupus erythematosus
• lupus cerebritis
• renal cortical scarring