What is Korsakoff Syndrome?

This syndrome or Korsakoff psychosis, (amnesic syndrome or confabulation). It consists of a mental disorder produced by the deficiency or absence of vitamin B1 or thiamine.

It is named after Korsakoff after Sergei Korsakov, a neuropsychiatrist who spread the theory of the condition.

This disease is strongly associated with alcoholics, but it can occur in severe cases of malnutrition. And in people who were treated with chemotherapy. Even so, alcoholism is usually the cause of malnutrition, and with the inflammation of sections of the stomach, it causes a deficiency of vitamin B.

The excess in the application of dialysis and liquid diets in excess, produce vitamin B deficiency, which results in a complication called Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome.

There is neuronal damage, Gliosis accompanied by hemorrhages in the mammillary bodies.

Anerograde and retrograde amnesia is present, as well as motor problems, and deficiency of sensations, personality changes and danger of death from cardiac, gastrointestinal causes and liverworts.

They lose some explicit memories, (not of mechanical processes), it is very famous because patients fill their memories with inventions, (lies), or other memories, never connected in life real. When this condition progresses, you can lose large areas of the patient's life memories.

These reactions are essentially caused by damage to the hypothalamus, the mammillary bodies and some other sections of the brain, due as we have already said to vitamin B1 deficiency.

Its treatment is based on intravenous or intramuscular injections of thiamine, but recovery is slow and in some cases there is no remedy, or it is very limited.