Case Report: Subacute combined degeneration misdiagnosed as a primary affective disorder: diagnostic pitfalls and clinical red flags
Yirui Dai, Yan Wang, Yuanyuan Chen, Jinfang Li, Xinyu Jia, Dongbin Cai, Guixiong Zhang, Haihong Guo, Songjiao Wei, Jianjun Wang, Xiude Qin · 2026
Read Case Report: Subacute combined degeneration misdiagnosed as a primary affective disorder: diagnostic pitfalls and clinical red flags by Yirui Dai, Yan Wang, Yuanyuan Chen, Jinfang Li, Xinyu Jia, Dongbin Cai, Guixiong Zhang, Haihong Guo, Songjiao Wei, Jianjun Wang, Xiude Qin (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13323509.txt.
Description
Yirui Dai and colleagues report a spinal cord disorder mistaken for mental illness, in a 2026 case report on subacute combined degeneration. A 39-year-old man had nine months of tingling, dizziness and emotional distress, with normal brain scans and electrical tests at first checks.
Doctors diagnosed somatic symptom disorder and anxiety, and several psychiatric drugs failed as leg weakness and unsteady walking grew. Specialist review found absent knee reflexes and lost vibration sense, and blood tests showed critically low vitamin B12, with spinal imaging changes running from neck to mid-back. B12 replacement plus escitalopram for leftover distress brought strong recovery, and at five months he walked fully with near-normal test scores.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yirui Dai, Yan Wang, Yuanyuan Chen, Jinfang Li, Xinyu Jia, Dongbin Cai, Guixiong Zhang, Haihong Guo, Songjiao Wei, Jianjun Wang, Xiude Qin |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 19593 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |