Twenty of 89 consecutive patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in whom autopsies were performed over a 3 1/2-year period had a vacuolar myelopathy that was most severe in the lateral and posterior columns of the thoracic cord. Light and electron microscopy showed that vacuoles were surrounded by a thin myelin sheath and appeared to arise from swelling within myelin sheaths. Signs and symptoms referable to the spinal-cord lesions, including paraparesis, often accompanied by spasticity or ataxia (or both), were present in all five patients with marked pathological changes, in five of seven patients with moderate changes, and in two of eight patients with mild changes. Fourteen patients were demented. The clinical presentation was sufficiently distinctive to provide a guide for antemortem diagnosis. Possible causes of the vacuolar changes include uncharacterized viral infection or a metabolic derangement related to selective nutritional deficiency.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 10. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 09 February 2021.
All research outputs
#4,914,528
of 34,410,315 outputs
Outputs from New England Journal of Medicine
#21,430
of 38,395 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#1,065
of 14,343 outputs
Outputs of similar age from New England Journal of Medicine
#23
of 88 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,410,315 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 85th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 38,395 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 120.2. This one is in the 43rd percentile – i.e., 43% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 14,343 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 88 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 73% of its contemporaries.
