Encephalitis lethargica epidemic milestones in early sleep neurobiology researches.

ABSTRACT: Around 100 years ago, the outbreak of peculiar encephalitis promoted knowledge advancement regarding sleep and psychomotricity control. This epidemic is believed to have disappeared ten years after it started, and it remained from 1916 to 1927. Since then, only a few sporadic cases have been reported, but previously, they happened in occasional and epidemics forms. Two pioneers in describing the cases were Jean-René Cruchet and his collaborators, and Constantin Von Economo. The firsts described diffuse symptomatology, "sub-acute encephalomyelitis." However, the reports by the Austrian aristocrat had a localized aspect which was admitted by him as a new disease, "Encephalitis lethargica" (EL). In his suppositions, based on clinical and anatomopathological material analysis, von Economo foun

SUBMITTER: da Mota Gomes M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7448964 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature