Hacohen, Yael; Ciccarelli, Olga; Kunchok, Amy C; (2025) Diagnostic Criteria for Autoimmune Encephalitis in Children: Challenges and Need for Clinical Expertise. Neurology , 105 (4) , Article e213946. 10.1212/WNL.000000000021394.

Text Ciccarelli_Autoimmune encephalitis unmarked 190525.pdf Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 25 July 2026. Download (174kB)

Abstract

Autoimmune encephalitis (AE) affects all age groups, with varying prevalence of neural antibodies. Despite broad testing, some children remain seronegative. Consensus-based criteria published in 2016¹ classify patients into definite, probable, and possible AE. Definite AE requires well-characterized neural autoantibodies with clinical and paraclinical evidence. Possible AE is diagnosed based on subacute onset of cognitive or psychiatric symptoms plus at least 1 supportive feature (e.g., seizures, MRI changes, and CSF pleocytosis) and exclusion of alternative causes. Probable antibody-negative AE (ANAE) can be diagnosed in seronegative patients with >2 supporting features of autoimmunity (MRI, CSF, biopsy). Pediatric-specific criteria² published later reduced the number of required supporting features and classified limbic encephalitis, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), and Bickerstaff brainstem encephalitis as probable ANAE.

Download activity - last month

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Archive Staff Only

View Item