Neuronal Autoantibodies Call for Attention in Epilepsy

Abstract

The concept of autoimmune epilepsy has gained considerable interest over the last few years. After the detection of a plethora of antibodies in patients with acute and established epilepsy, prospective cohorts started investigating factors of inflammation. In a recent report, Dubey et al. reported neurological autoantibodies (NAAs) among patients with epilepsy of unknown etiology. They investigated 112 patients for various NAAs including anti-GAD and found NAAs in 34.8% of the cases (1). It is most notable that our recent studies showed very similar antibody prevalence and clinical associations as those of Dubey et al. We investigated identical patient groups, namely, focal epilepsy of unknown cause and mesial temporal lobe epilepsy with hippocampal sclerosis (MTLE-HS) 3 years ago, and published our results of 81 patients (2). We found antibodies to the glycine receptor (GLY-R) in 6.2% of our patients, CASPR2 in 4.9%, NMDAR in 2.5%, and VGKC-complex in 2.5% (2).