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Holoprosencephaly
Etiology

Usually associated with trisomy 13 or 18.
May be associated with other abnormal chromosome abnormalities or occasionally with normal chromosomes.
Arises early in gestational life causing lack of cleavage of hemispheres.
Pathogenesis

Arises in the first few weeks of intrauterine life when the brain does not cleave into hemispheres.
Usually associated with chromosomal defects.,
Epidemiology

Seen in l in 13,000 births
Usually sporadic.
General Gross Description

Facial abnormalities range from the cyclops with one central abnormal eye, a proboscis above it, and an abnormal mouth to close set eyes with no nose and an abnormal mouth often with cleft lip and palate
Brain abnormalities range from a central ventricle with fused hemispheres or almost no hemispheres and fused basal ganglia and thalamus to absence of the olfactory bulbs and tracts only.
The severity of the facial abnormalities reflects the the severity of the brain abnormalities to a certain extent.
•Examples:
Semilobar holoprosencephaly Cyclops / Holoprosencephaly
General Microscopic Description

In severe holoprosencephaly, the cortex is not well organized and there are cerebral and cerebral heterotopias.
The white matter is thinned.
About the brainstem, astrocytes have migrated into the leptomeninges.
•Examples:
References

Cotran RS, Kumar V, Robbins SL: Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease. 5th ed. Philadelphia, W.B. Saunders, 1994, pp. 1302.
Poirer J et.al. Manual of basic neuropathology. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1990, pp. 199.

For Most Current Information Search Medline at National Library of Medicine
This link will directly take you to the relevant new literature
Holoprosencephaly
Synopsis by: M. L. Grunnet M.D. (TX2000M20100)[27]
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