Active clinical trials for "Encephalitis"

The aim of this study is to investigate the immune responses following a booster immunisation with the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine in elderly subjects (above 60 years of age) in comparison to a young study group.

The study aims to answer this question: whether adequate immunity can be achieved in a short time, that is, by a rapid immunisation process, using at least one of 3 new TBE immunisation schedules? The investigators will test the immunogenicity (the degree of immunity achieved) of each of the immunisation schedules at various times after the injections. If the results of this clinical study are positive, it may then be possible to develop the most successful immunisation schedule so that it can be used routinely. This means that the results of the clinical study have an enormous practical value in preventing TBE in people travelling or moving into areas with a high TBE risk.

Rural communities involved in agriculture are often at highest risk of insect-borne diseases in Southeast (SE) Asia. Skin-applied insect repellents may prove a useful means of reducing mosquito-borne diseases for those people working outdoors in high risk areas. This trial is evaluating the use of insect repellent (20% diethyltoluamide) to reduce incidence of malaria, Japanese Encephalitis and Dengue. The investigators will recruit up to 1000 households from 100 villages in rural Laos. In each house the investigators shall recruit up to 5 individuals. Half of households will be randomised to repellent, half to a placebo. All individuals will be provided with insecticide treated bed nets for use at night. All household occupants will be followed for 7 months to record malaria cases by Rapid Diagnostic Test every month. Blood spots will be collected at start and end of study to measure Japanese Encephalitis and Dengue. All positive cases will be promptly treated. Outcome will be reduction in number of malaria cases (primary outcome) and Dengue/Japanese Encephalitis (secondary outcomes).

The objective of this study is to assess the TBE antibody persistence approximately three years after administration of a TBE booster vaccination with FSME-IMMUN 0.25 ml Junior in children who received either 0.25 mL or 0.5 mL TicoVac for their primary vaccination series in Study 146A.

Detection of autoantibodies targeting neuronal surface or intracellular antigens is a keystone for the diagnosis and the treatment of auto-immune encephalitis and paraneoplastic neurological syndromes. A strategy commonly used for their detection is to perform a screening with a tissue-based immunofluorescence assay or immunohistochemistry assay and a second line test to confirm and identify the autoantibody. Since several years, commercial kits are used by a growing number of laboratories to screen the presence of these autoantibodies. However, the diagnostic performance of these commercial kits is highly variable and several studies reported a high prevalence of false-positive and false-negative results with commercial immunodots and cell-based assays. It is therefore essential to explore commercial kits limitations in order to avoid false-positive and false-negative results that could lead to misdiagnosis and/or to delay the treatments. To assess the diagnostic performance of commercial kits, the investigators performed a prospective study in which the investigators screened patients neuronal autoantibodies in cerebrospinal fluid and sera using commercial tissue-based indirect immunofluorescence assay and CBAs in comparison with an in-house tissue-based indirect immunofluorescence assay.

PRIME aims to demonstrate through neurocognitive assessment that BICU patients will have a degree of neurocognitive dysfunction following a major burn, that this neurocognitive dysfunction is due to an underlying neuroinflammatory process by fMRI neuroimaging techniques, and that the neurocognitive deficit is associated with a reduced quality of life.

In Europe, tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) virus causing TBE is transmitted by the bite of Ixodes ricinus tick, which can also transmit Lyme borreliae , the causative agent of Lyme borreliosis (LB). Since TBE and LB are both endemic with high incidence rates in Slovenia, we should be attentive to the possibility of double infections. Double infections with TBE virus and Lyme borreliae were reported to occur rarely even in endemic countries, however reliable data on coinfection rates are rather limited. Microbiological diagnosis of TBE virus infection is quite straightforward, and there is no specific therapy for TBE available so far. This markedly differs from borrelial infection, in which case interpretation of serological test results demands more caution, but there is highly efficient antibiotic treatment available for LB. This may lead to over prescribing of antibiotics to TBE patients with documented borrelial antibodies in serum indicating possible coinfection with Lyme borreliae, but missing clinical or microbiological criteria for proven borrelial coinfection. Approximately 10% of patients who had been treated appropriately for LB and about one third of patients after TBE report nonspecific subjective complaints, such as fatigue, headache, arthralgia, and myalgia, termed post-Lyme and post-encephalitic symptoms, respectively. These may not be differentiated clearly from nonspecific symptoms occurring with a rather substantial incidence also in the general population. A trend of ascribing medically unexplained nonspecific subjective symptoms to LB in subjects with positive borrelial antibodies in serum puzzles the situation further. The aim of this prospective observational study was to assess the proportion and clinical implication of proven and possible coinfection with Lyme borreliae in patients with TBE, and to evaluate the association between anti-borrelial antibiotic therapy and clinical outcome in the subgroup of patients with possible coinfection.

Auto-immune encephalitides involve auto-antibodies targeting the central nervous system, and particularly the synapse and its structure, such as protein CASPR2. CASPR2 antibody-associated auto-immune encephalitides lead to an inflammation of the limbic system and generate focal temporal seizures and cognitive impairment. Most patients are initially hospitalized because of the temporal seizures (Joubert et al., JAMA Neurology 2016). However, many already show at that time cognitive impairment, which has failed to elicit the appropriate investigations, therefore delaying the diagnosis. The study will hence investigate precisely the initial, sometimes neglected, clinical symptoms and those leading to the diagnosis, in the cohort of patients suffering from a CASPR2 antibody-associated encephalitis, from the French reference center on paraneoplastic neurological diseases and autoimmune encephalitis. This way, the study aims to delineate the symptoms that should trigger suspicions of a CASPR2 antibody-associated encephalitis

Paraneoplastic neurological syndromes (PNS) are rare complications of cancer occurring in 0.01% of cases. Their clinical, biological and radiological presentation is heterogeneous and may constitute a diagnostic challenge. Anti-Ma2 PNS are rare diseases with a guarded prognosis. They are most often associated with a seminoma-like testicular tumor but can also be associated with lung cancer. Classically, they present as limbic, diencephalic and/or brainstem encephalitis. Anti-Ma2 antibodies target intracellular receptors and are characteristic of a particular form of encephalitis. Atypical manifestations including narcolepsy-cataplexy, weight gain, sexual dysfunction and motor neuron syndrome have been described and explain the difficulty in diagnosing anti-Ma2 associated PNS. It seems interesting to better characterize the phenotypes of Ma2 patients in order to optimize the diagnosis and follow-up.

In a number of neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression, both brain inflammation and glutamate mediated excitotoxicity (cell death through over-activated stimulation) are suspected to play a key role. It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine the potential destructiveness of the inflammatory response seen in disease states by studying the brain's inflammatory cells (microglia) activity in isolation. The investigators are proposing to develop the means to concurrently study inflammatory response (i.e., microglial activity) and its potentially devastating consequence (i.e., glutamate excitotoxicity) across the entire brain in order to establish the importance of inflammation. In this study the investigators propose a phased clinical study whereby the early-phase involves the development of our capacity to study inflammation-mediated damage to brain cells, followed by a feasibility study in patients with clinical depression that tests whether concurrent inflammation and glutamate excess could be measured in key brain regions associated with a depressed mood state.