Rinshō shinkeigaku = Clinical neurology
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Case Reports
[A case of Japanese encephalitis presenting with unilateral lesions in diffusion-weighted MRI].
We report the findings of diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI) taken serially in a patient with Japanese encephalitis (JE). The patient was a 43-year-old woman presenting with headache, high fever and consciousness disturbance. The diagnosis of JE was made based on more than fourfold elevation of serum complement fixation antibody titer for JE virus in the convalescent phase of illness. ⋯ The improvement of the DWI findings was paralleled with that of the consciousness level and the cell number and neuron specific enolase concentration in the CSF, suggesting that DWI is useful for evaluation of the disease activity in JE. The lesions in the brain suffering from Japanese encephalitis are usually bilateral and diffuse. To our knowledge, this is the first report of JE presenting with unilateral lesions on MRI, of which phathomechanism remains to be elucidated.