When white blood cells 'rebellion' and attack the brain itself, this is what happens

Caroline Walsh, 25, lives in Boston, USA: The girl recovered from a strange and rare disease. But it had left Walsh's memory in a space, it was a year she couldn't recall anything.

Walsh had to sit down with friends, review every story, every photo on his Facebook album. But she still couldn't remember what had happened the day that everything started. From one night, at 4 am, Walsh's father found her convulsing on the floor.

Previously, Walsh was sick, leaving his own apartment to rest with him. Two doctors diagnosed her with only flu. But everything went on until Walsh woke up in the hospital, with his hands tied to the bed. She begs her sister to rescue her by believing she has been kidnapped.

There were times when the comedian woke up, the girl believed that she was a member of the band Zac Brown Band. She sang their favorite songs, stirred and twitched 100 times a week, to the point where doctors were forced to put Walsh into a coma.

Caroline Walsh (left), the girl recovered from a rare autoimmune encephalitis, on the right is another patient who also has this strange disease.

Nothing above was remembered by her. The first memory Walsh recalled was just a recovery room in the hospital, filled with flowers and family members. That's when the doctor made a clear diagnosis, she suffered from a mysterious disease called autoimmune Encephalitis (AE).

There are many things that people cannot know about this disease. But experts believe it is only part of a more serious disease. In it, the body attacked itself.

In Walsh's case, the chosen disease attacked the brain. It starts a chain reaction, causing symptoms similar to depression or schizophrenia. Therefore, the key point is to distinguish between autoimmune encephalitis and common neurological disease.

If diagnosed correctly and early enough, autoimmune encephalitis can be treated and the patient will recover completely. Conversely, not diagnosed or mistaken for it with mental illness can lead to the death of the patient.

The disease robs the human mind

In the heart of the capital of England, there is a street named Real Road Memory (Memory Lane). Going along will lead you to the London Institute of Psychiatry, where Dr. JAN "Nick" Corsellis (1915-1994) cut the brain of 3 corpses and discovered the first evidence of autoimmune encephalitis.

Located deep in a very dense area of ​​the brain called the limbic system , normal, smooth, soft tissues like rubber now become inflated and develop inflammation. It was obvious that something had attacked the limbic system from within.

Most patients have such a lesion in the brain diagnosed with cancer. But strangely, then, there were people who had completely recovered. Only their personality began to change.

Spouses or close friends are often the first to recognize the strange change in the behavior of the patient. Often they start to forget, some experience sudden manic episodes or depression. A 58-year-old bus driver who had autoimmune encephalitis woke up at home every morning, he often wondered where he was.

Dr. Corsellis looked at the inflammation organization in the part of the brain related to memory and mood, but he was unable to explain the cause of it, the swelling caused a series of symptoms on the patient.

The brain region is affected by a patient with autoimmune encephalitis, which creates an inflammation organization and steals all the memories of the patient.

The noticeable symptoms Walsh encountered began in a normal working day. She was confused and had to repeat her words in conversations. Walsh joked to a colleague that he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's.

'I'm always confused in every situation , ' she said.

The following week, strange issues continued to appear. Walsh had a talent to remember the names of strangers. But that time, when meeting some new friends, she introduced herself several times and tried to remember the names of everyone in it.

'They introduced the name, but after a few minutes of talking, I won't remember their names anymore, even the first part of the story they're talking about,' Walsh said.

At the office the next day, things got worse with Walsh. Something had made her drag her boss to the hallway of the meeting room and start crying.'My person has disappeared . I am no longer me,' Walsh said.

The mysterious situation has invaded her body. At times when he did not feel nervous and anxious, Walsh fell and depressed.'There is something that is eclipsing my mind, I can feel it , ' Walsh said.

When the body attacks itself

Caroline Walsh took a picture with her sister in the hospital.

Our bodies all have an immune system, a defense mechanism with all the agents from the outside world.

Most immune system activity is done and involves white blood cells. Cells direct attacks as a football coach, developing antibodies to target the target of destruction.

But sometimes, this error may occur. In the process of creating an immune response to attack a virus or a disease, the body comes back to attack itself. That is the cause of a disease called autoimmune disease.

That happens like tangled wires, said Brenden Kelley, a neurologist at the hospital Henry Ford. He is also a member of the community with a small number of autoimmune disease researchers.

Occasionally, this abnormal reaction may originate from a virus that contains bacteria. In other cases, cancer is a source of disease. That's when the immune system is intended to fight cancer, but it will also attack areas where the body is healthy without getting sick, Kelley said.

Song about the holiday

Three months later, Walsh moved to the old house on the outskirts of Boston, where she lived for the rest of her childhood. She met two doctors, both of whom diagnosed that puzzlement as a flu.

But one day, when her father, a police officer in Boston, woke up at 4 am to prepare to go to work, he heard strong noises coming from the house. The officer immediately found his daughter on the ground with twitching limbs. He called her name as if shouting, but Walsh could not respond.

The most common cause of seizures Walsh has is epilepsy . In addition, it can be extremely low blood sugar, high fever or a stroke.

At the hospital, doctors gave Walsh a wide range of tests, including spinal puncture. It is a painful and dangerous procedure, when the doctor will pierce the needle into the spine to remove the protective fluid around the spinal cord and the brain carries it for analysis.

In most cases, this test is what helps doctors detect autoimmune encephalitis, Kelley said. But sometimes, for example, Walsh's own case, the characteristic sign of subtle inflammation to make a clear conclusion.

A spinal puncture test can diagnose autoimmune encephalitis.

When Walsh's sister, Alana, arrived at the hospital, her sister was lying motionless in bed under a harsh light. Walsh's hand was wrapped in a thick cushion like boxing boxer gloves. It is fastened to the bed wall, to keep the infusion tube from shifting when she moves.

Walsh motioned for Alana to come closer so she could whisper something into her ear."I have to fight them, I have to get out of this place ," Walsh said as he turned his gaze to the nurse's staff who looked at her sisters suspiciously.

When Alana asked her sister what exactly she was talking about, Walsh explained that she was kidnapped while sleeping and was now held hostage in the hospital.

A few hours passed, after sinking into sleepiness and dizziness, Walsh woke up with a fever and announced that he was a member of the Zac Brown Band. She started singing her favorite song, a catchy melody about an escape from reality called 'Knee Deep'.

'I will put the whole world away from me for a few minutes' , she sings, and increasingly sings. 'Pretend I don't live in that world.'

When the whole family could not stop Walsh from disturbing, Alana stood up and closed the door to prevent other patients from being awakened. Inside, Walsh continued to sing: 'My whole mind only thinks of an endless vacation. The ocean is the only cure for me. Wish these things don't disappear. '

During the following week, Walsh met a total of more than 100 seizures. Alana recalled that every time she sat next to her sister to talk, Walsh twitched at once. They are not as strong seizures as in previous epilepsy, but will be smaller and more subtle episodes.

'You will recognize it when my sister's eyes look absently at a certain point. Every minute, she has such a time, ' Alana said. 'She was trembling and confused, her heart rate was very high and the doctors were also confused when we talked to them. Doctors think that seizures cannot occur at such a frequency, they are too much. '

Eventually, the family and doctors had to decide to bring Walsh into a medical coma.

Before being diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis, Caroline Walsh twitched up to 100 times per week.

Smoke from the fire

In children, infections such as simple strep throat can also trigger autoimmune encephalitis. Susan Schulman, a pediatrician in New York, said she met hundreds of patients with a neurological disease called PANS - a debilitating neuropathy in children.

The first case that Schulman met in 1998. A 5-year-old Brooklyn boy showed panic when wearing a Jewish holiday outfit, which looked different from normal clothes.

'Her mother was mad , ' said Schulman. At first, she only thought she had a childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) . But medicine does not make symptoms disappear. She was brought back to the clinic with worse OCD symptoms, plus a strep throat.

Strangely, when Schulman treated her sore throat with conventional antibiotics, OCD symptoms also disappeared.'It's strange,' said Schulman.

Around the same time in the late twentieth century, Susan Swedo, a pediatrician at the National Institutes of Health, published a scientific article in the American Journal of Psychiatry, describing 50 cases of pediatric patients with disorders. nerve related to streptococcal infection.

Schulman realizes that any five-year-old girl's symptoms may be related to the infection she had.'I treat infections as matches that burn up autoimmune reactions. Inflammation is a fire, and the [nerve] symptoms you see are just smoke from the fire , ' Schulman said.

Autoimmune encephalitis is just one of many autoimmune diseases. Scientists have identified up to 80 different autoimmune diseases, including type 1 diabetes, which develops when the body attacks insulin-producing cells itself. Multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and many more diseases are all recognized as autoimmune diseases.

Kelley and colleagues from the Henry Ford Institute are currently studying autoimmune diseases that specifically affect the brain. By working with scientists in the brain and immune system, Kelley hopes to find common ground in two areas to know where exactly the cause of the disease comes from.

In Walsh's case, 'these people tend to not show many medical problems, and then suddenly they feel crazy, they lose themselves,' Kelley said. 'Obviously something is wrong, but what exactly is it is difficult to know.'

Reconnect the pieces of memory

Caroline Walsh at the rehabilitation center, she had to learn to go back.

When Walsh woke up in the hospital, she didn't know why she was here.'I don't know why everyone is in the room. Why is it decorated with these flowers , 'she recalled.

The day before, Walsh was diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis and doctors treated her with a high-dose steroid, the best treatment to date for the disease. The drug begins to reduce inflammation in the brain.

In Walsh's case, the affected brain area is the hippocampus , responsible for memory and memory. 'I just remember that I always asked' What is that? ' , you know that. 'Wait, why am I here?' and they answered but I kept forgetting, " she said.

In other patients with autoimmune encephalitis, the disease is usually triggered by cancer. Thus, treatment must focus on eliminating cancer first.'When you get rid of cancer, you also get rid of the irritation , ' Kelley said.

Treatment of autoimmune encephalitis can vary depending on the cause of its onset, but time is always the key. If doctors treat the disease that caused the problem, many patients can fully recover and live for the rest of their lives.

'It is a race against time, in a sense,' Kelley said.

When Walsh begins to regain her memory ability, she realizes that she will have to learn a lot of basic things.

'I remember that I woke up and intended to go to the toilet. A nurse brought me a wheelchair and I jumped up 'Oh no, I don't need it,' Walsh said. 'After that, I stood up and suddenly fell back, realizing I couldn't go.'

The truth is that after that, Walsh spent 10 days at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Center to regain the ability to walk on the ground. There, she also learned other basic skills, such as how to use a spoon.

Doctors say that a patient with autoimmune encephalitis takes up to 12-18 months to 'return to himself'. Walsh went through a year of functional rehabilitation at Spaulding Center and continued to come back there often.

She quit her sales job to become a volunteer, a babysitter at Spaulding Center and Boston Boys and Girls Club. At 25, the girl once again left her parents' home to live a more independent life.

Caroline Walsh (middle) with her family.

'I was handed back my life, it was a gift. Another gift is a voice to clarify the disease that few people have known so far , 'Walsh wrote on a personal blog.

By sharing his story, Walsh hopes to add momentum to other autoimmune encephalitis patients, that they are not alone in their fight.

'There is an invisible disease that I discovered, which can create a very lonely feeling. People may not be with you anymore, not because they don't want to, but because they don't realize the war is going on in the way you are facing , 'Walsh said.

'I will never return to being human, before the autoimmune encephalitis comes and wants to take my whole life. But the disease will not be able to win. Your life is your own, right? '.