[Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) cytochemistry of acute cerebrovascular diseases with clear CSF: observation of nonspecific esterase activity of mononuclear phagocytes].

CSF nonspecific esterase (ANAE) activities of mononuclear phagocytes of 35 patients with intracerebral hematoma (ICH) with clear CSF and 25 with cerebral thrombosis and 17 normals were observed. The ANAE activities of ICH were much higher than those of thrombosis significantly (P less than 0.01). Furthermore, the distributions of ANAE activities of all cases suggested that there were few overlaps between both diseases. The CSF cytochemical detection was obviously superior to routine CSF cytological examination in differentiating strokes with clear CSF. The authors concluded that these results provided a simple inexpensive and relatively accurate method to differentiate hemorrhagic from ischemic cerebrovascular diseases in case of without CT.