The cellular pathology of Menkes steely hair syndrome.

The principal neuropathologic abnormality observed in three autopsy cases of Menkes steely hair syndrome was widespread nerve cell loss and gliosis, especially severe in the cerebral and cerebellar cortex and in the relay nuclei of the thalamus. Granular stellate cells of neocortical layer IV and the granule cells of the cerebellum are cell classes which were particularly severely depopulated. The degree of reduction of myelinated axons is consistent with axonal degeneration secondary to nerve cell loss. There are also prominent abnormalities in the patterns of dendritic arborization of surviving cortical pyramids and cerebellar Purkinje cells as seen in Golgi impregnations. The deviant neuronal forms are probably due, in part, to failure of innervation by afferent fiber systems during the fetal as well as postnatal epochs.