Atypical Herpes Simplex Encephalitis With Extratemporal Involvement

Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is recognized as the most common cause of sporadic encephalitis among adults. The combination of magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography, and cerebrospinal fluid tests is usually diagnostic. In this article, we describe a case of atypical HSV encephalitis presenting a syndrome of febrile encephalopathy in the absence of focal neurological features, including mental and sensory disturbance, pyramidal signs, ataxia, and cranial nerve deficits, and in which magnetic resonance imaging demonstrated lesions restricted to the parietal and occipital lobes without typical localization of HSV encephalitis in the insula and inferior frontal lobe.