Advanced catecholaminergic disturbances in the brain in a case of Wilson's disease

The patient presented is an eight-year-old girl who died of Wilson's disease. Monoamines were analyzed in the brain and the results were compared with those obtained from 19–48 patients who had died of non-neurological somatic diseases. The brain from the Wilson patient had greatly increased noradrenaline concentrations and greatly decreased dopamine concentrations of the basal ganglia, whereas the opposite was seen in the hypothalamus.