Newswise — University of Utah Health researchers are leading a five-year, $22-million nationwide clinical trial for NMDA receptor encephalitis––a type of autoimmune encephalitis that prompts the immune system to mistakenly attack the brain, causing confusion, memory loss, seizures, and symptoms similar to bipolar disorder and other psychiatric conditions.
The rare brain disorder, which became well-known through the best-selling book Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan, can also lead to a host of potentially life-threatening physical problems affecting the nervous system, heart, lungs, and kidneys.
The research, supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), seeks to evaluate the safety of a new drug treatment, measure its effectiveness in improving quality of life, and identify clinical indicators called biomarkers that could help doctors predict how well patients will recover from NMDA receptor encephalitis.
“These are patients who are often previously healthy, young members of our community, who are stricken quite literally overnight, and who without good treatment and care for this condition can be left permanently disabled or, worse, can die,” says Stacey L. Clardy, M.D., Ph.D., the study’s principal investigator and a clinical researcher at U of U Health. Clardy also holds a joint appointment in the Division of Neuroimmunology at University of Utah’s Department of Neurology and at the George E. Wahlen Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Center. “If we diagnose and treat these patients promptly, however, we can get the majority of them back to a normal life.”
The researchers, located at 20 academic hospital sites nationwide (including U of U Health) that are part of the NeuroNEXT Clinical Trial Network, as well as two sites in Europe, are beginning to recruit newly diagnosed participants with anti-NMDAR for the clinical trial.
