Simple and effective serum biomarkers potential for predicting status epilepticus in anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor encephalitis

BACKGROUND: Patients with anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) encephalitis who also present with status epilepticus (SE) often have a poor prognosis. The aim of this study is to explore simple and effective predictors for anti-NMDAR encephalitis accompanied with SE. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed 65 anti-NMDAR encephalitis patients from January 2015 to December 2018 who admitted to the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University. Patients were divided into SE group and non-SE groups. Their pre-treatment data and 3-month follow-up data were retrospectively analyzed. RESULTS: The results showed that compared with the non-SE group, the levels of serum uric acid (UA) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) in anti-NMDAR encephalitis patients with SE decreased significantly before treatment. Additionally, the levels of serum UA and HDL-C increased while the level of C-reactive protein (CRP) decreased 3 months after treatment in the SE group. Compared with the non-SE group, the SE patients had higher modified Rankin scale (mRS) scores before (mRS1) and after treatment (mRS2). Serum UA concentrations before treatment showed significantly negative correlations with mRS1 (r = − 0.407, p < 0.01) and mRS2 (r = − 0.458, p < 0.001), while the level of serum CRP before treatment had strong positive correlations with mRS1 (r = 0.304, p < 0.05) and mRS2 (r = 0.301, p < 0.05) in anti-NMDAR encephalitis patients. The receiver operating characteristic curve demonstrated that the combined detection of UA, HDL-C and CRP before treatment had a significantly higher value (the area under the curve = 0.848; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.74–0.957; p < 0.001) to predict anti-NMDAR encephalitis accompanied with SE than that of single detection. CONCLUSIONS: Hence, the combined detection of serum UA, HDL-C and CRP before treatment may be simple and effective indicators for predicting SE in anti-NMDAR encephalitis, which may be helpful in early stages to remind clinicians to be alert to the emergence of SE.