A Neurosyphilis Case Presenting with Cognitive Dysfunction, Epileptic Seizures, High Signal Intensity and Significant Atrophy in Left Amygdala/Hippocampal Region

Abstract

Syphilis is generally a sexually transmitted, chronic, multisystemic disease. Central nervous system involvement occurs in secondary and teritary stages. Neurosyphilis presents itself as meningitis or meningovasculitis in secondary stage, and general paresis or tabes dorsalis in teritary stage. But, in the antibiotic era, instead of classical neurosyphilis forms, atypical forms with merged clinical symptoms started to occur more frequently making the diagnosis difficult. In this article, we present a neurosyphilis case who applied to the clinic with generalized tonic clonic convulsions resulting in trafic accidents. The characteristic of this case is ongoing memory problems due to attentional dysfunction as shown in neuropsychological tests despite penicilin treatment and the presence of a high signal intensity and significant atrophy in his left amygdala/hipocampal area in cranial magnetic resonance imaging.