Sarah Lapointe MD

Hashimoto encephalopathy

Hashimoto encephalopathy is a poorly understood syndrome of reversible cognitive impairment in the setting of antithyroid autoantibodies. There are no validated criteria for the diagnosis of the disease, but proposed diagnostic criteria include: (1) encephalopathy with seizures, myoclonus, or stroke-like episodes; (2) subclinical or mild overt thyroid disease; (3) normal or nonspecific abnormalities on brain MRI; (4) positive serum anti-TPO or anti-TG antibodies; (5) absence of well-characterized neuronal antibodies in CSF and serum; (6) reasonable exclusion of alternative causes.