Active clinical trials for "Autoimmune Diseases of the Nervous System"

Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is a severe demyelinating disease that selectively involves the optic nerves and the spinal cord but usually spares the brain. NMO is considered to have a B cell induced pathogenesis. Mitoxantrone (MITO, Novantrone®), a synthetic anthracenedione approved for worsening relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) and secondary progressive MS, has been shown to primarily suppress the humoral response. We conducted a prospective 2-year study to evaluate the benefit of MITO in five relapsing NMO patients.

The purpose of this study is to determine if treatment with reverse transcriptase inhibitors returns the interferon signature observed in patients with AGS to normal levels.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether Tcelna (imilecleucel-T, autologous T-Cell Immunotherapy) is effective in the treatment of secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS).

Prospective cohort study evaluating FDG PET in 56 patients with confirmed autoimmune encephalitis - based on 2016 Graus criteria, and 2021 paraneoplastic neurological syndromes criteria - at the acute phase, before immunomodulating treatment, or within 10 days of treatment initiation.

Autoimmune encephalitis (AE) and paraneoplastic neurological syndromes (PNS) are rare neuroimmune syndromes with a wide range of clinical presentation but without pathognomonic clinical sign facilitating the diagnosis. A lot of differential diagnoses are possible such as neurodegenerative diseases or viral infections. Although rare the diagnosis of AE or PNS is essential because despite severe neurological symptoms, patients can be cured by appropriate immunotherapy. Autoantibodies highly specific of AE and PNS has been described in the serum and cerebrospinal fluid of the patients and can be used as biomarkers of the disease. Their presence can predict an autoimmune origin and in many cases a good prognosis after immunotherapy. However, if some autoantibodies are now well-characterized and industrial kits have been developed to detect them, in numerous cases of highly suspect AE or PNS no specific autoantibodies are identified leading frequently to an inappropriate treatment. Furthermore, as the mechanisms of AE and PNS is still unknown, treatments are not optimal and in some cases inefficient. There is no prognosis biomarker able to predict the patient's sensitivity to immunotherapy and there are only few clues to know how the immune system can provoke the neuropsychiatric symptoms observed in the patients. The investigators will use this project to better characterize AE and PNS patients to identify new diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers and develop new diagnostic tools.

Investigation of efficacy of vigabatrin in refractory autoimmune encephalitis patients

The intent of this clinical study is to answer the questions: Is the proposed treatment safe Is treatment effective in improving the disease pathology of patients with Multiple Sclerosis and clinical outcomes?

This study evaluates the efficacy of erythropoietin in refractory autoimmune encephalitis. Ten patients will receive 100 IU/kg of erythropoietin 3 times a week for 12 weeks.

The Antibodies Causing Epilepsy Syndromes (ACES) Study is a observational cohort study focusing on detection of auto-immune epilepsy in patients with epilepsy of unknown origin.

Most of patients with autoimmune encephalitis are left with permanent cognitive deficits of varying severity. The patients' life and career would be affected definitely by cognitive deficits. Recently, more and more clinical physician have begun to focus on cognitive impairment of patients with autoimmune encephalitis. Generally, the outcome was measured by the modified Rankin Scale (mRS). However, the mRS are commonly used to evaluate the degree of disability or dependence in the daily activities of the patients suffering from a stroke and cognition function were minimally evaluated in this scale. It is crucial to adopt detailed cognition tools to study the long-term cognitive outcomes and as an indicator of overall curative effect judgment in autoimmune encephalitis. Currently, only early immunotherapy is uniformly and consistently considered to produce favorable cognitive outcomes. However, studies concerning the association of second-line immunotherapy with cognitive outcomes have been scarce and have shown conflicting results regarding autoimmune encephalitis. Hence, the goal of this study was to explore cognitive neural mechanism of autoimmune encephalitis by using neuropsychological tests and multi-mode MRIs.