The Encephalitis Center

Acute encephalitis, inflammation of the brain, is a complex and severe disease. Patients typically suffer from the rapid development of fever, headache, seizures, and focal neurological deficits. Diagnosis is often challenging, and therapeutic strategies have yet to be optimized. As a result,

Progress in the field has been slowed by the lack of effective tools available to researchers and clinical practitioners. Despite extensive clinical evaluation, the specific cause of encephalitis remains unidentified in the majority of patients. However, we are now at a point where we can harness advanced medical and lab-based techniques for both diagnosis and treatment of encephalitis.

We recognize that prompt identification of encephalitis combined with advanced diagnostic and therapeutic modalities is likely to improve outcomes in affected patients. Because we feel that we can best impact patient’s lives in the acute setting, we have developed our center as an inpatient unit.

The Johns Hopkins Encephalitis Center is the only center in the United States dedicated to providing expert clinical care for patients with encephalitis.  We have established a multidisciplinary group of specialists in neuroinflammation and neuroinfectious disease, neuro-critical care experts, infectious disease physicians, and laboratory pathologists to improve the diagnosis and treatment of patients with encephalitis.