Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome associated with nephrotic syndrome.

Kabicek and colleagues described a case of nephritic-syndrome-associated posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES) (Kabicek, et al. 2010). This adds to the accumulating evidence that PRES can be associated with disorders other than hypertension. However, we wonder how the authors would explain the neuroimaging findings unsuggestive of vasogenic oedema. PRES (also named reversible posterior leukoencephalopathy syndrome, RPLS) represents a clinicoradiological syndrome characterized by vasogenic oedema as revealed by apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) map of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) (Bartynski, 2008). The pathogenesis of PRES has been suggested to be autoregulation failure and endothelial dysfunction (Sharma, et al.). ...