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Neural autoantibodies in cerebrospinal fluid and serum in clinical high risk for psychosis, first-episode psychosis, and healthy volunteers
- The pathophysiological role of neural autoantibodies in acute psychotic disorders is receiving increased attention. However, there is still an ongoing debate, whether predominantly psychotic manifestations of autoimmune encephalitides exist that may remain undetected and, thus, untreated. Furthermore, it is discussed if such conditions can be diagnosed based on serum antibody results or if a reliable diagnosis requires additional cerebrospinal fluids (CSF) results. In this study, we screened pairs of serum and CSF samples from antipsychotic-naïve individuals with first-episode schizophrenic psychosis (FEP, n = 103), clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR, n = 47), and healthy volunteers (HV, n = 40) for eight different antibodies against various antigens that have been shown to be associated with autoimmune encephalitides: N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR, NR1 subunits only), glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD65), leucine-rich glioma inactivated protein 1 (LGI1), contactin-associated protein-like 2 protein (CASPR2), α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptor (AMPAR) subunit 1, AMPAR subunit 2, γ-aminobutyric acid-B receptors (GABABR), and glycine receptors. All patients were within the norm with regards to a careful neurological examination, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, an electroencephalogram (EEG), and routine blood pathology. All CSF samples were autoantibody-negative. In three serum samples of individuals with FEP, we detected low-titer CASPR2 immunoglobulin (Ig) G antibodies (≤1:160, n = 2) and non-IgG antibodies against NMDAR (n = 1) (overall serum-autoantibody prevalence in FEP: 2.91%). However, the IgG titers were below the laboratory cut-off defined for positivity, and non-IgG antibodies are of no clinical relevance. This suggests that there were no cases of autoimmune encephalitis in our cohort. Our results highlight the importance and the high specificity of CSF analysis to reliably detect autoantibodies. They confirm the hypothesis that pure psychotic manifestations of antibody-associated autoimmune encephalitides without any additional neuropsychiatric findings are very rare. However, special attention must be paid to those presenting with atypical mental illnesses with additional neurological symptoms, evidence of clinically-significant cognitive involvement, profound sleep-wake perturbations, seizures, electroencephalographic, or magnetic resonance imaging pathologies to be able to identify cases with autoimmune-mediated psychiatric syndromes.
Author: | Christian G. BienGND, Cathrin RohlederORCiDGND, Juliane K. MüllerGND, Corinna I. BienGND, Dagmar KötheORCiDGND, F. Markus LewekeORCiDGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-620153 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.654602 |
ISSN: | 1664-0640 |
Parent Title (English): | Frontiers in psychiatry |
Publisher: | Frontiers Research Foundation |
Place of publication: | Lausanne |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of Publication (online): | 2021/03/26 |
Date of first Publication: | 2021/03/26 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2021/10/19 |
Tag: | anti-neural autoantibodies; at-risk mental state; autoimmune encephalitis; autoimmune-mediated psychosis; clinical high at-risk mental state; healthy control; schizophrenia; ultra-high risk for psychosis |
Volume: | 12 |
Issue: | art. 654602 |
Page Number: | 7 |
First Page: | 1 |
Last Page: | 7 |
Note: | This study was supported by grants from the Stanley Medical Research Institute (FML), the Koeln Fortune Program (FML), and intramural funds from the Central Institute of Mental Health (FML). The funding sources had no influence on the design of the study or the analysis and interpretation of the results. |
HeBIS-PPN: | 488104769 |
Institutes: | Medizin |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 15 Psychologie / 150 Psychologie |
6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit | |
Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
Licence (German): | ![]() |