Perinatal telencephalic leucoencephalopathy.

The frequent, though generally unrecognized, occur-rence of damage to telencephalic white matter during the perinatal period prompted the present charac-terization of the pathological changes as well as a consideration of associated clinical and necropsy findings. Symmetrical astrocytosis or acutely damaged glial cells found predominantly in regions undergoing myelination suggest that the latter is associated with enhanced vulnerability. Although a single aetiological factor could not be identified in the clinical and necropsy data of the infants in this study, it may well be that the changes in deve-loping white matter are non-specific morphological responses to a variety of noxious stimuli. The avail-able data indicate an increasing deficit in brain