Cytotoxic edema and interleukin-6 in hypertensive encephalopathy.

We report a female, 10 years of age, with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis accompanied by hypertensive encephalopathy. The patient developed a cytotoxic brain lesion, as revealed by the high signal intensity on diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging, which corresponded to the hypoperfusion area on single-photon emission computed tomography scan using (99m)Tc-ethylcysteinatedimer. Cerebrospinal fluid interleukin-6 activity was elevated when the hypertensive encephalopathy revealed active central nervous system disease, and its activity decreased when the encephalopathy recovered from the central nervous system manifestations. We speculated that the cytotoxic edema and associated parenchymal damage in hypertensive encephalopathy were closely related to the intrathecal overproduction of interleukin-6.