The clinical features and MRI findings of autoimmune encephalitis / 中国神经精神疾病杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the clinical symptoms and MRI imaging findings in patients with autoim-mune encephalitis and to improve clinician's understanding about the clinical and imaging characteristics of autoim-mune encephalitis. Methods We analyzed the clinical features and MRI findings of 33 patients with autoimmune en-cephalitis in our department. Results Of these 33 patients, 27 (81.8%) had psychiatric symptoms, 26 (78.8%) had seizure, 18 (54.5%) had involuntary movement, 11 (33.3%) had fever and 9 (27.3%) patients presented with cen-tral hypoventilation, the present of involuntary movement and fever was lower in group LE than in group NMDA. A total of 10 patients had positive MRI finding. Of these 10 patients, 8 had brain parenchyma lesions, 3 had meningeal involvement. The most likely affected parenchymal lesions are occipital lobe, bilateral hippocampus, frontal lobe, pari-etal lobe, temporal lobe, thalamus and cerebellum. Conclusion Psychiatric symptoms and seizure are the most com-mon neurological symptoms of autoimmune encephalitis. MRI may show abnormal signals in the limbic system. FLAIR is the most sensitive MR imaging sequence for detection of autoimmune encephalitis lesions.