Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2017 Jun 6;9(6):138.
doi: 10.3390/v9060138.

Viral Encephalitis of Unknown Cause: Current Perspective and Recent Advances

Peter G E Kennedy  1 , Phenix-Lan Quan  2 , W Ian Lipkin  3
Affiliations
Review

Viral Encephalitis of Unknown Cause: Current Perspective and Recent Advances

Peter G E Kennedy et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

Viral encephalitis causes acute inflammation of the brain parenchyma and is a significant cause of human morbidity and mortality. Although Herpes Simplex encephalitis is the most frequent known cause of fatal sporadic encephalitis in humans, an increasingly wide range of viruses and other microbial pathogens are implicated. Up to 60% of cases of presumed viral encephalitis remain unexplained due to the failure of conventional laboratory techniques to detect an infectious agent. High-throughput DNA sequencing technologies have the potential to detect any microbial nucleic acid present in a biological specimen without any prior knowledge of the target sequence. While there remain challenges intrinsic to these technologies, they have great promise in virus discovery in unexplained encephalitis.

Keywords: encephalitis; unbiased high-throughput sequencing; virus; virus discovery.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
VirCapSeq-VERT target enrichment.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Strategy for laboratory investigation of unexplained encephalitis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Granerod J., Ambrose H.E., Davies N.W., Clewley J.P., Walsh A.L., Morgan D., Cunningham R., Zuckerman M., Mutton K.J., Solomon T., et al. Causes of encephalitis and differences in their clinical presentations in England: A multicentre, population-based prospective study. Lancet Infect. Dis. 2010;10:835–844. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(10)70222-X. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Kennedy P.G. Viral encephalitis: Causes, differential diagnosis, and management. J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry. 2004;75(Suppl. 1):i10–i15. doi: 10.1136/jnnp.2003.034280. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chaudhuri A., Kennedy P.G. Diagnosis and treatment of viral encephalitis. Postgrad. Med. J. 2002;78:575–583. doi: 10.1136/pmj.78.924.575. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Davison K.L., Crowcroft N.S., Ramsay M.E., Brown D.W., Andrews N.J. Viral encephalitis in England, 1989–1998: What did we miss? Emerg. Infect. Dis. 2003;9:234–240. doi: 10.3201/eid0902.020218. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Granerod J., Tam C.C., Crowcroft N.S., Davies N.W., Borchert M., Thomas S.L. Challenge of the unknown. A systematic review of acute encephalitis in non-outbreak situations. Neurology. 2010;75:924–932. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e3181f11d65. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources