• C Frisch, M P Malter, C E Elger, and C Helmstaedter.
• Department of Epileptology, University of Bonn Medical Center, Bonn, Germany. christian_frisch@gmx.de
• Eur. J. Neurol. 2013 Sep 1; 20 (9): 1297-304.

Background And PurposeAutoantibodies (abs) to glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) and to voltage-gated potassium channels (VGKC) induce distinct courses of limbic encephalitis, related to MRI findings, seizure outcome and cognition.MethodsA detailed analysis of the cognitive course of the two forms is presented, spanning a median time interval of 28 months, including parameters of attention, learning and memory in 15 VGKC-ab-positive and 16 GAD-ab-positive patients.ResultsIn both groups, the initially significantly impaired attention performance recovered to a putatively premorbid level. In VGKC patients the partially severely impaired learning and memory performance improved under treatment but remained subnormal at last follow-up. By contrast, GAD-ab-positive patients had initially less impaired learning and memory scores but did not show an improvement under treatment.ConclusionsThe results provide evidence of distinct relations between inductive processes and cognitive outcome in VGKC-ab-positive and GAD-ab-positive subforms of limbic encephalitis, which possibly depend on differences in pathogenic molecular mechanisms and affected cerebral loci.© 2013 The Author(s) European Journal of Neurology © 2013 EFNS.

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