IAES’ President, Tabitha Andrews Orth, spoke with Dr. Josep Dalmau about this topic.  For those of you who are new to the AE community, Dr. Dalmau discovered the first antibody in Autoimmune Encephalitis. In 2007 he published the first paper which identified anti-NMDAr AE. Since that time, his team has identified many antibodies in this group of diseases, autoimmune encephalitides.  Their research continues. Dr. Dalmau also collaborated with IAES to develop the only product on the market for autoimmune encephalitis, AE Trivia Playing cards. Learn more here. https://autoimmune-encephalitis.org/playing_cards/

This is what Dr. Dalmau said.  “As you know, autoimmune encephalitides are not one but many diseases. Many patients with these diseases are cured and never have any relapses or need further treatments. As with many other diseases, some patients are cured with one type of treatment or combination of treatments, and other patients are cured with other treatments or combinations.

The fact that a disease is cured does not necessarily mean that all patients need to be treated with the same drug or “magic bullet”, it depends on the patient and the disease. These concepts apply even for cancer; there are many patients with cancer that are cured. Not all receive the same treatment. The treatment varies with the type of cancer, and even with a specific type of cancer, not all patients are treated similarly. This example applies to many different diseases.

The question can be formulated as: Are there patients with autoimmune encephalitis that are eventually cured? Answer: Yes.”