Autoimmune epilepsy: Distinct subpopulations of epilepsy patients harbor serum autoantibodies to either glutamate/AMPA receptor GluR3, glutamate/NMDA receptor subunit NR2A or double-stranded DNA

Yonatan Ganor, Hadassa Goldberg-Stern, Tally Lerman-Sagie, Vivian I. Teichberg, Mia Levite*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

58 Scopus citations

Abstract

We studied 82 patients with different types of epilepsy and 49 neurologically intact non-epileptic controls, and identified three different subpopulations of epilepsy patients bearing significantly elevated levels of autoantibodies to either GluR3B-peptide of glutamate/AMPA receptor subtype 3 (17/82; 21% of patients), or to a peptide of NR2A subunit of glutamate/NMDA receptors (15/82; 18%), or to double-stranded (ds) DNA, the hallmark of systemic lupus erythematosus (13/80; 16%). Most patients had only one antibody type, arguing against cross-reactivity. Nearly all anti-dsDNA Ab-positive patients did not harbor anti-nuclear autoantibodies. Most patients had no history of brain damage, febrile convulsions, early onset epilepsy, acute epilepsy or intractable seizures. We suggest to measure the 'autoimmune-fingerprints' of epilepsy patients for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)11-22
Number of pages12
JournalEpilepsy Research
Volume65
Issue number1-2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2005

Keywords

  • Antibodies
  • Autoimmunity
  • Double-stranded DNA (dsDNA)
  • Epilepsy
  • GluR3
  • Glutamate receptor
  • NR2A

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