′Wine Glass′ sign in recurrent postpartum hypernatremic osmotic cerebral demyelination

Abstract

Osmotic demyelination syndrome resulting from postpartum hypernatremia is a recently described entity wherein young women present with hypernatremic encephalopathy and white matter hyperintensities along with quadriparesis from rhabdomyolysis. It is an acute monophasic condition with acute hypernatremia occurring during puerperium with good recovery in majority of the patients with treatment. To the best of our knowledge, recurrent postpartum hypernatremia with encephalopathy, osmotic demyelination, and rhabdomyolysis has not been described. We present a young lady who had two episodes of reversible postpartum hypernatremic encephalopathy with rhabdomyolysis. Cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) before treatment revealed osmotic demyelination on both occasions. During first admission MRI revealed hyperintensities in internal capsule and corpus callosum, and at second admission revealed more extensive white matter hyperintensity, which simulated the ′wine glass′ appearance.

Keywords

• Hypernatremia
• magnetic resonance imaging
• osmotic demyelination
• postpartum
• ′Wine-Glass′ sign