Neuronal Autoantibodies in Children with Epilepsy

Please write a clinical study about the prevalence of neuronal antibodies in children with epilepsy compared to children with other neuronal diseases.

Question: Are neuronal autoantibodies a risk factor for the occurrence of epilepsy in children or is autoimmune encephalitis associated with epilepsy in children.

For this purpose in 400 children the neuronal autoantibody status has been investigated. 200 of these children were children with known epilepsy and 200 of these children were children with other neuronal diseases. For this the 40 most important neuronal autoantibodies have been determined in both groups.

Result: Not a single auto- antibody could be identified which is predictive for epilepsy, but all neuronal autoantibodies taken together were significantly more often positive in the epilepsy group than in the non-epilepsy group.

Conclusion: Not a single autoantibody assay can be helpful in the situation but a panel including the most important 40 neuronal autoantibodies can be helpful in predicting autoimmune associated epilepsy.