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Reduced Hospital Incidence of Autoimmune Encephalitis During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Jonathan Wickel1, Ha-Yeun Chung1, Franz Felix Konen2
1Section of Translational Neuroimmunology, Department of Neurology, Jena University Hospital, Germany.
Objectives:
The aim of this study was to analyze changes in hospital incidence cases and disease severity of autoantibody-associated autoimmune encephalitis (AE) during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with the prepandemic period.
Methods:
A retrospective multicenter study analyzed data from 24 centers within the German Network for Research on Autoimmune Encephalitis (GENERATE). Patients with a new diagnosis of definite antibody-positive autoimmune encephalitis from 2017 to 2022 were included and divided into prepandemic (2017-2019) and pandemic (2020-2022) periods.
Results:
Among 392 patients, 227 were diagnosed before and 165 during the pandemic (mean 9.5 vs 6.9 per site, p = 0.04). A reduction was observed in cases with antibodies to neuronal surface antigens (174 vs 122 cases; mean 7.3 vs 5.1 per site, p = 0.02), while cases with antibodies against intracellular antigens remained stable (p = 0.40). No differences were observed in disease severity, age, or sex distribution between periods.
Discussion:
This study provides clinical data on antibody-positive AE before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings do not support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 infection triggers autoantibody-associated AE or increases disease severity.
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