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January 1959

Tuberous Sclerosis in Adults with Normal Intelligence

Author Affiliations

Toronto

From the Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine, and the medical services of the Toronto General and New Mount Sinai Hospitals.

AMA Arch NeurPsych. 1959;81(1):43-48. doi:10.1001/archneurpsyc.1959.02340130063006
Abstract

Tuberous sclerosis, or epiloia, is a heredofamilial disease involving tissues in widespread areas of the body. The pathologic changes represent a combination of a developmental anomaly of some tissues and an overgrowth of others. The most characteristic clinical manifestations are the combination of mental deficiency, epilepsy, and adenoma sebaceum. With few exceptions, the signs and symptoms of the disease appear during infancy or childhood.1

The mental symptoms range from the idiocy level through imbecility and upward to a mild degree of feeblemindedness. Occasionally mental powers are little impaired, if at all.2,3 An intellectual deficit is the fundamental characteristic of the mental disorder, to which may be added behavior disturbances and emotional instability, with sometimes a primitive form of psychosis. There is no parallel between the severity of the epilepsy and the degree of mental deficit. Some patients are epileptic aments while in others seizures appear early and increase

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