Mysterious disease, MRI, PET and other examinations done

Hi,
I wish I could get help and diagnosis this way of the disease I am having, and if there is someone who reads this and could recognize which disease is in question, and if there is a treatment.

I am afraid that I have been taken ill with some mysterious disease causing blindness and premature degeneration, which will be diagnostized when it is too late. Doctors are not having any ideas what could be the disease.

Symptoms, findings, general healthiness:
- general healthiness good, classical migraine since teen age years
- blood pressure normal; 100/80, pulse 65
- no cure, medicines or other disease
- Findings 1; in brain
o MRI: lot of whitish nervous tissue (substantia alba) changes, that cannot be fit very well as demyelinate plaques. Fitting better as ischemic changes (bright signal focuses of whitish nervous tissue of forebrain hemispheres )
o PET 1: (with sugar analogy): in image there can be seen in parietal lobe’s upper part post centrally intensifying hypometaboly; in other words, : post central symmetric bilateral hypometaboly in the parietal lobe’s superiorical parts
o PET 2: (PiB imaging): in image, there are gatherings of marking substance in the whitish nervous tissue of the forebrain that fits non specific. No gatherings in the grey matter of forebrain
o Conclusion of the PET was that there is weakened metabolism of the nerve cells (hypo-metabolism), which causes cell damages. Additionally, the magnetic imaging showed, that there were bright dots here and there fitting problems with blood circulation in brain
o In the EEG, aberrations in the left side noticed – typical to epilepsy. However no diagnosis made that I would be epileptic, and no epileptic attacks occurred.
o
- Findings 2; eye changes noticed:
o (end of) optic nerves of both eyes has been noticed to be concaved, which refers to glaucoma
o Eye pressure however quite low: 12
o Eye swelling in mornings, no other swelling
o Sometimes eyeball ache (mornings, evenings)
o 3 years ago it was noticed, that there were ‘blurs’ of a shape of kind of a half curve in both eyes iris (the blue part); outer and inner edge of iris. No reasons for those found.
o Normal sight, no contact lenses, but reading glasses I have had for 3 years
o No risk factors of glaucoma; no high blood pressure, no inherited strains, no diabetes, no high eye pressure, no myopics.
- Sometimes joint ache, that may be origin of abrasions
- Female, age 50 years

I wish that you could help me and send any possibly helping information you may have of this, to this e-mail address. I also hope that you reply or forward this mail if you know somebody or some place/forum that could help me finding answers.

Anna, Sweden
[email protected]

Hi Anna,
The blurry changes in the eye are probably 'arcus senilis' or sometimes referred to as 'arcus cornealealis', which is regarded as an indicator of coronary artery disease via atherosclerotic plaque build up. Some alternative therapists state it is caused by a high salt diet, but this is unproved - although the relationship between high salt and circulatory disease is often discussed.

If you do have ischaemic plaques in the brain that are not due to demyelination, I would have your neck arteries checked for blood flow via a doppler ultrasound.
Mini strokes in the brain can result in traces seen on scan, or more likely diffuse changes due to chronic lack of circulating oxygen - although symptoms would probably be more acute.

Another possibility is that prior to birth, during birth, or in your early development your mother had an illness, you suffered anoxic damage during the birth process, or you had a high temperature as a young child. These illnesses can leave traces in the brain which are not found until scans are undertaken at a later date for other symptoms, and may therefore be unrelated.
I will be interested to hear other opinions on this topic.
Regards
MrPhysio+