Cerebral cortical encephalitis followed by recurrent CNS demyelination in a patient with concomitant anti-MOG and anti-NMDA receptor antibodies

We report the case of a patient who initially presented with fever, headache and seizure. MRI revealed a fluid attenuation inversion recovery (FLAIR) high-intensity lesion involving the right temporal, parietal and occipital cortex. Afterwards, the patient developed three recurrent episodes, manifested as brainstem encephalitis, optic neuritis and ADEM-like illness successively, indicating demyelination. Both of his serum anti-MOG and CSF anti-NMDAR antibodies were proved positive by transfected cell based assays. We consider our case to have cortical encephalitis due to certain autoimmune mechanism initially, and then developed MOG-antibody mediated recurrent demyelination in the following episodes.