Virchow Disease

Virchow Disease, congenital interstitial encephalitis (encephalitis interstitialis congenita), described by Virchow in 1865, is characterized by the appearance in the brain of newborns or children in their first months of life of a significant number of cells containing fat granules, often arranged in numerous small groups. They are observed almost exclusively in the white matter. It has been established that the appearance of fat-grain-containing cells in the brain of an infant before the completion of myelination (8-9 months) cannot be regarded as a pathological phenomenon, whereas their local accumulations undoubtedly are. The latter have been observed in many infants who died from sepsis and in children who exhibited convulsions and other cerebral symptoms during life. The large number of tonic convulsions in the first months of life, previously considered as neonatal tetanus, is probably explained by these brain changes. The pathogenesis of the focal changes mostly consists not in inflammatory phenomena but in purely degenerative processes, which are predominantly softening processes caused by trauma during childbirth (details - see Encephalitis).