A case of steroid-responsive encephalopathy associated with autoimmune thyroiditis (hashimoto's encephalopathy)

Abstract

Hashimoto's encephalopathy (HE) is a syndrome which represents itself with diverse neuropsychiatric symptoms and high titers of antithyroid antibodies, the syndrome has no specific radiological or EEG findings, and it can be dramatically resolved with corticosteroid treatment. HE can show different clinical findings such as, confusion, stupor, coma, stroke like episodes, epileptic seizures, myoclonus, behavioral changes, hallucinations and delusions. The cause of HE has been proposed to be autoimmune because of it's association with other immunologic disorders, female predominance, inflammatory findings in cerebrospinal fluid and response to treatment with streoids. Because the disease has a wide range of symptom scala and has no specific radiological findings and also has no proven pathogenetic mechanism that can explain the occurence of the disease it is thought that the diagnosis of the syndrome can be delayed or the disease can be misdiagnosed. This knowledge is thought to be crucial as we know that corticosteroid treatment can lead to quick and dramatic response when the syndrome is diagnosed early. In this case report, a patient who applied to our clinic with findings of cognitive and psychotic disturbances and was followed up with the HE diognosis is presented.