brain tumour, mood disorder and encephalopathy. discusion of the clinical case presented in volume 6, number 2

We report a case of a 65 years old femalepatient, who was admitted to the hospital with non specific neurological symptoms and whohad preliminary imagenological findings of anextra-axial tumor mass (a meningioma of thesphenoid’s wing), which was taken to completesurgical removal. Afterwards, she developedprogressive neurologic deterioration until herdeath. The final diagnosis was acute pongiformencephalophaty, and was obtained by cerebralbiopsy.Spongiform encephalopathy was described,almost a century ago, as the Creutzfeldt-JakobDisease, poorly diagnosed in our environmentbecause of its low frequency and uncommononset, which starts with a mood disorder followedby a phase of dementia and a final fataloutcome. The gold standard for the diagnosisis based on a biopsy or an autopsy of the brain,with immunohistochemical stains for the prionicabnormal protein.