Autoimmune thyroid encephalopathy

PubMed, the Internet portal of biomedical and life sciences literature, indexed an interesting article, entitled “Autoimmune thyroid encephalopathy presenting with epilepsia partialis continua” (Clin EEG Neurosci. 2006 Jul;37(3):204-9 ). Authors are Aydin-Ozemir Z, Tuzun E, Baykan B et al., from the Department of Neurology, Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey. The authors report the first case of an autoimmune thyroid encephalopathy presenting with multifocal motor status epilepticus. A 37-year-old female patient was admitted with multifocal motor seizures intractable to intravenous status epilepticus treatments, asymmetrical quadriparesis, truncal ataxia and continuous semi-rhythmical jerks. Pathological signal alterations were detected in both precentral cortices in MRI examination. Autoimmune thyroiditis was diagnosed after radiological examinations of the thyroid gland and thyroid function tests. Remarkably, autoimmune thyroiditis may present with migrating focal motor status epilepticus. To access the full abstract of the article, click here.