Clinical, Radiological, and Molecular Findings of Acute Encephalitis in a COVID-19 Patient: A Rare Case Report

We report a case of encephalitis in a young male patient with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) who initially presented with typical symptoms of fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath but later on developed acute respiratory distress syndrome and required mechanical ventilation. Two days...

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Autores principales: Sattar, Saud Bin Abdul, Haider, Muhammad Adnan, Zia, Zeeshan, Niazi, Muhammad, Iqbal, Qasim Z
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cureus 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7586424/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33133820
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.10650
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author Sattar, Saud Bin Abdul
Haider, Muhammad Adnan
Zia, Zeeshan
Niazi, Muhammad
Iqbal, Qasim Z
author_facet Sattar, Saud Bin Abdul
Haider, Muhammad Adnan
Zia, Zeeshan
Niazi, Muhammad
Iqbal, Qasim Z
author_sort Sattar, Saud Bin Abdul
collection PubMed
description We report a case of encephalitis in a young male patient with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) who initially presented with typical symptoms of fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath but later on developed acute respiratory distress syndrome and required mechanical ventilation. Two days post-extubation, the patient developed new-onset generalized tonic-clonic seizures and confusion. MRI of the brain was done and it showed an abnormal signal in the bilateral medial cortical frontal region. His cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) analysis revealed a characteristic picture of a viral infection with a high white blood cell count and normal glucose and protein levels. After ruling out all common causes of viral encephalitis such as herpes simplex virus (HSV) and based on the review of available literature regarding the neurological manifestations of COVID-19, this case was labeled as acute viral encephalitis secondary to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection.
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spelling pubmed-75864242020-10-29 Clinical, Radiological, and Molecular Findings of Acute Encephalitis in a COVID-19 Patient: A Rare Case Report Sattar, Saud Bin Abdul Haider, Muhammad Adnan Zia, Zeeshan Niazi, Muhammad Iqbal, Qasim Z Cureus Internal Medicine We report a case of encephalitis in a young male patient with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) who initially presented with typical symptoms of fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath but later on developed acute respiratory distress syndrome and required mechanical ventilation. Two days post-extubation, the patient developed new-onset generalized tonic-clonic seizures and confusion. MRI of the brain was done and it showed an abnormal signal in the bilateral medial cortical frontal region. His cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) analysis revealed a characteristic picture of a viral infection with a high white blood cell count and normal glucose and protein levels. After ruling out all common causes of viral encephalitis such as herpes simplex virus (HSV) and based on the review of available literature regarding the neurological manifestations of COVID-19, this case was labeled as acute viral encephalitis secondary to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Cureus 2020-09-25 /pmc/articles/PMC7586424/ /pubmed/33133820 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.10650 Text en Copyright © 2020, Sattar et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Internal Medicine
Sattar, Saud Bin Abdul
Haider, Muhammad Adnan
Zia, Zeeshan
Niazi, Muhammad
Iqbal, Qasim Z
Clinical, Radiological, and Molecular Findings of Acute Encephalitis in a COVID-19 Patient: A Rare Case Report
title Clinical, Radiological, and Molecular Findings of Acute Encephalitis in a COVID-19 Patient: A Rare Case Report
title_full Clinical, Radiological, and Molecular Findings of Acute Encephalitis in a COVID-19 Patient: A Rare Case Report
title_fullStr Clinical, Radiological, and Molecular Findings of Acute Encephalitis in a COVID-19 Patient: A Rare Case Report
title_full_unstemmed Clinical, Radiological, and Molecular Findings of Acute Encephalitis in a COVID-19 Patient: A Rare Case Report
title_short Clinical, Radiological, and Molecular Findings of Acute Encephalitis in a COVID-19 Patient: A Rare Case Report
title_sort clinical, radiological, and molecular findings of acute encephalitis in a covid-19 patient: a rare case report
topic Internal Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7586424/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33133820
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.10650
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