Algorithms for the diagnosis of autoimmune encephalitis

The growing prevalence of autoimmune encephalitis (AE), the predominance of young people of working age among patients, and the potential curability of the disease with early treatment determine the importance of timely diagnosis of this group of disorders. Differential diagnosis of AE is often challenging, primarily due to significant polymorphism, low specificity of clinical manifestations, and a high frequency of seronegative cases. The proposed algorithms for diagnosing AE include a general approach to differential diagnosis and specific approaches based on the clinical and anatomical phenotype and a specific set of symptoms (if any) to simplify and rationalize the diagnostic search. Timely diagnosis of AE is critical for the prognosis of the disease since early and adequate pathogenetic therapy is associated with more favorable outcomes of AE.