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Antithyroid antibodies and circulating immune complexes (CIC) were found in the CSF of six patients with Hashimoto's encephalopathy (HE) but not in the CSF of 21 controls. The synthesis of autoantibodies and CIC was intrathecal and their titers were independent of the patients' clinical status or therapy. Their presence in the CSF of patients with acute or subacute encephalopathy may be useful in diagnosing HE.

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Objectives: To compare stroke incidence rates among comparable registries and to make correlations with aging of the resident populations. Methods: This correlation study included all comparable stroke registries maintained in industrialized countries (Italy, France, United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, United States, and Australia). Eleven community-based stroke registries with similar high proportions of radiologically confirmed diagnoses based on standard definitions were identified. Incidence rates of first-ever stroke from the prospective L’Aquila registry and from the other registries were compared after age and sex standardization to the 1996 European population. The rates were then correlated with the proportion of individuals aged 65 and over in the corresponding resident populations by means of the Poisson regression analysis. Results: In the L’Aquila registry, the crude annual incidence of first-ever stroke was 281/100,000 (95% confidence interval 271–293) based on 2,515 patients included during a 3-year period. The rate standardized to the European population was 249/100,000. Standardized incidence ratios indicated a significant excess of first-ever strokes in the L’Aquila registry up to 51% with respect to most of the compared studies. A significant correlation was also found between crude (p < 0.0001) and standardized (p = 0.0012) stroke incidence rates and proportions of individuals aged 65 and over in the different populations. Conclusions: The L’Aquila experience suggests that any further aging of a population will increase the stroke occurrence for both the reasons of a direct and predictable effect of the growing proportion of elderly individuals within that population and a disproportionately increased stroke risk in the older age groups.

Changes in visual evoked potentials, mainly affecting the amplitude of the major positive wave, are referred to by many authors and are related to the pathophysiological basis of primary headache. We performed both transient pattern-reversal visual evoked potentials and spectral analysis by means of fast Fourier transform of 8-Hz steady-state pattern-reversal visual evoked potentials in 34 children affected with migraine (14 with aura, 20 without aura), and compared them with 14 patients with tension-type headache and 10 healthy subjects. The amplitude of the response to the transient stimulation (P100) was higher and the latency shorter in the patients with headache compared with the controls, but the difference was not statistically significant. The absolute power of the first harmonic (1F) obtained by the spectral analysis of the steady-state stimulation was increased in all the patients with headache compared with the controls, and the increase was significant in patients with migraine. These data seem to confirm the hypothesis of abnormal processing of visual input in migraineurs and could be interpreted as neurophysiological support for the theory that different headache types are related conditions. Furthermore, the spectral analysis of steady-state pattern-reversal visual evoked potentials could be proposed as a test to diagnose migraine.