24-Hour Rhythms in Rectal Temperature and Blood Eosinophils After Hemidecortication in Human Subjects

¹ From the Cambridge State School and Hospital, Cambridge, and the Departments of Pathology and Surgery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

The subtotal removal of a cerebral hemisphere in humans has been carried out, inter alios, by Krynauw (South African M. J. 24: 539, 1950), who discovered the usefulness of the operation in the treatment of medically intractable epilepsy with coexisting infantile hemiplegia. It seemed of physiologic interest, as well as of clinical significance, to raise the questions a) whether such hemispherectomies affect certain 24-hour rhythmic body functions and, if so, b) whether alterations of rhythms may constitute important side-effects of hemidecortication in hemiparetics with epilepsy. Therefore, blood eosinophils were counted and rectal temperatures were measured at 90-minute intervals during a 24-hour period on three female and three male subjects, at 3, 10, 12, 15, 19 and 20 postoperative months, respectively. In addition to the unilateral removal of the cerebral cortex in all of these six subjects, certain subcortical ganglia had also been excised in some of them. Irrespective of the anatomical areas removed, in each case 24-hour rhythms were detected in both variables studied, the temperature rhythms being the more regular. The cerebral cortex on one side, either left or right, thus appears to be nonessential to the maintenance of the rhythms in rectal temperature or blood eosinophils. The same applies to the caudate nucleus or globus pallidus of one side. More subtle effects of partial hemispherectomy upon the phase relations of these two rhythms also were explored as a function of time after operation, but were not ascertained herein.