Harvard Catalyst Profiles

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Canavan Disease

"Canavan Disease" is a descriptor in the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus, MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). Descriptors are arranged in a hierarchical structure, which enables searching at various levels of specificity.

A rare neurodegenerative condition of infancy or childhood characterized by white matter vacuolization and demeylination that gives rise to a spongy appearance. Aspartoacylase deficiency leads to an accumulation of N-acetylaspartate in astrocytes. Inheritance may be autosomal recessive or the illness may occur sporadically. This illness occurs more frequently in individuals of Ashkenazic Jewish descent. The neonatal form features the onset of hypotonia and lethargy at birth, rapidly progressing to coma and death. The infantile form features developmental delay, DYSKINESIAS, hypotonia, spasticity, blindness, and megalencephaly. The juvenile form is characterized by ATAXIA; OPTIC ATROPHY; and DEMENTIA. (From Adams et al., Principles of Neurology, 6th ed, p944; Am J Med Genet 1988 Feb;29(2):463-71)


This graph shows the total number of publications written about "Canavan Disease" by people in Harvard Catalyst Profiles by year, and whether "Canavan Disease" was a major or minor topic of these publication.
Bar chart showing 4 publications over 4 distinct years, with a maximum of 1 publications in 1998 and 1999 and 2006 and 2021
To see the data from this visualization as text, click here.
Funded by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences through its Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program, grant number UL1TR002541.