Brain's Immune Battle: The Complex Case of Quadruple Antibody Encephalitis

Imagine your brain is a city, and suddenly, its own defense system turns against it. That's what happens in autoimmune encephalitis (AE). Usually, your immune system protects you, but in AE, it mistakenly attacks parts of your brain, causing weird symptoms like personality changes, memory loss, seizures, and strange movements. Most cases involve antibodies that stick to the surface of brain cells. These often respond well to treatments. However, some antibodies hide inside brain cells, making them tough to treat and linked to nasty tumors. Recently, doctors have noticed AE patients with multiple antibodies. This makes symptoms even more complex and hard to predict. Having four different antibodies, like GABABR, GAD65, SOX1, and Ma2, is incredibly rare. These patients face a real challenge, especially if they also have a tumor. Currently, we mainly learn about these cases through individual stories shared by doctors. There's still much to discover about how to best treat and predict the future for people with multiple antibody AE.

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