Alcoholic Myelopathy and Nutritional Deficiency

A patient with chronic alcoholism presented with myelopathy and low serum folate and cobalamin levels. A 42-year-old alcoholic man had gait disturbance for 4 months. A neurological examination revealed marked spasticity with increased deep tendon reflexes and extensor plantar responses of the lower limbs. His cobalamin level was decreased and his serum folate level was particularly low. His plasma ammonia level was not increased. Abstinence and folic acid and cobalamin supplementation stopped the progression of his neurological deficits. This case indicates that nutritional deficiency should be monitored closely in patients with chronic alcoholism who present with myelopathy.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Internal medicine

• Publication date

  2017-01-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.2169/internalmedicine.56.7364PMID 28049986PMCID 5313434
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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