2019 Volume 36 Issue 4 Pages 341-344
Autoimmune encephalopathies are clinically and immunologically heterogeneous disorders. Many different types of autoimmune encephalopathy have been discovered, and most common type may be Hashimoto encephalopathy in it. We often recognize that patients with autoimmune encephalopathy are often misdiagnosed as functional psychogenic movement or somatoform disorders. We have reported 63 patients with autoimmune encephalopathy. Two–thirds of patients showed motor disturbance mostly with unsustained or give–way weakness. About 70% of patients showed sensory abnormalities that was not explainable anatomically. 27% of patients exhibited involuntary movements such as tremor entrainment, dystonia, or coarse involuntary movement. Although give–way weakness, anatomically unexplainable pain, and strange involuntary movements were thought to be psychogenic, the presence of one of these three symptoms was indicative of autoimmune encephalopathy. As autoimmune encephalitis exhibits diffuse involvement with the whole brain, these symptoms were entirely understandable. Except for the presence of organic disease, most patients were classified into somatoform disorders or functional movement disorders. Without first excluding autoimmune encephalopathy, physicians should not diagnose somatoform disorders.
