Novel Drug Therapy for Autoimmune Encephalitis
Author(s): Sandisiwe Kema, Lourdes de Fátima Ibañez Valdés, Sibi Joseph and Humberto Foyaca Sibat
Abstract
Introduction: This study aims to review recent medical literature on new drug therapies for Autoimmune Encephalitis (AE).
Methods: A comprehensive search of the medical literature in the PubMed/ Medline and Cochrane review databases was conducted to identify articles reporting novel information on AE, diagnostic procedures, and medical therapy. The systematic review performed in this study followed the guidelines recommended by PRISMA (2020 statement).
Results: A total of 798 investigations were retrieved from the database. Records underwent title and abstract screening, and 680 were excluded. After removal of duplicates, 92 full- text articles were sought for full-text retrieval. 12 records were further excluded because the full text could not be accessed, and 6 were excluded because they could not be fully translated into English. Finally, 33 studies were included for quantitative evaluation but cero investigations reporting novel hypotheses on administration of faecal microbiota transplantation were found for meta-analysis.
Conclusions: The total number of publications on new aspects and novel therapies for AE is scarce, and no reports on novel hypotheses or Faecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT) for the therapy of AE beyond the current clinical trials were identified. We hypothesised that administering FMT may help alleviate the neuropsychiatric symptoms of AE, leading to a better outcome. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to propose a novel therapeutic drug for AE patients. However, a well designed randomised clinical trial must be done to prove or reject our hypotheses
