Abstracts

Rasmussen encephalitis (RE) is a rare disorder of unknown etiology. The disease has been attributed to possible viral infections or autoimmune mechanisms. HLA is the landmark of autoimmune disorders and specific alleles have been associated with different neurological diseases. Here we report the results of HLA Class-Ia study in Brazilian RE patients., After approval by the Ethic Committee of our institution and after informed consent was obtained from the patients, DNA samples were obtained from 13 Brazilian patients with pathologically confirmed RE. For the study of allele prevalence, data were compared with those for ethnically matched control population. The Fischer test was used to determine possible differences. The level of significance was established at p[lt]0.05., No specific HLA Class-Ia was found to be strongly associated with RE in our patients.[table1], HLA-Class-Ia molecules are expressed in most somatic cells including certain neurons, making some neural population potentially susceptible to autoimmune attacks under triggering stimuli from cytotoxic T-cells. Additionally, HLA Class-Ia molecules might have other roles in the CNS in terms of neuroplasticity and neuroprotection, or might be involved in normal brain development. In fact, HLA Class-Ia molecules have been associated with some neurological disorders like schizophrenia, autism, or dyslexia. RE is an autoimmune disorder observed mostly during the years of brain development and associated with neuroplastic alterations that leads to an intriguing form of [italic]epilepsia partialis continua[/italic]. However, in spite of multiple potential roles for HLA molecules in RE, in this group of patients no specific HLA Class-Ia was found to be strongly associated with RE. We conclude that none of the specific HLA Class-Ia alleles studied here is particularly involved in RE. However, larger samples involving multicentric studies are necessary to confirm our findings., (Supported by FAPESP.)