For Healthcare Providers

Is The Autoimmune Brain Panel™ Right For Your Patient?

Science that’s changing the way medicine is practiced.

It can be difficult to diagnose infection-triggered, immune-mediated neuropsychiatric symptoms. But identifying these complex disorders is imperative to improving patient outcomes, since treatment focuses on eradicating the infection(s) and treating the immune system, rather than simply treating with psychotropic medications.

Only test of its kind

Providing hope for patients with treatment-resistant conditions.

Approximately 800 million individuals worldwide ¹ suffer from neurologic, psychiatric and behavioral disorders. Typically, the standard of care is treatment with psychotropic drugs. However, 20-60% of these patients do not respond to treatment ² and fail to improve because, in some cases, the root cause is immune-mediated and goes undiagnosed.

That’s all changing with the Autoimmune Brain Panel™ – the only commercially available test of its kind that assists clinicians in diagnosing and treating immune-mediated neuropsychiatric disorders. More than 2,500 clinicians globally are utilizing the Panel to improve the lives of chronically ill patients – giving hope to those most difficult to treat.

Focus Areas

The Autoimmune Brain Panel™ can assist clinicians in identifying an underlying autoimmune process in patients with various treatment-resistant neurologic and/or psychiatric symptoms.

Testing with the Panel may be helpful if you have a patient suffering from any of the following disorders, who has not responded to treatment.

Anxiety Disorders

In some people, symptoms associated with anxiety disorders may be caused by an infection-triggered autoimmune encephalopathy.

Obsessions & Compulsions

Increasing evidence suggests that an abnormal immune response, often triggered by an infection, can cause obsessive compulsive behaviors.

Motor & Vocal Tics

Among adults with new onset tics, 1 in 3 are likely to have an external precipitating event, such as an infection, trigger the disorder.

Depression & Mood Changes

Certain infection(s) can trigger an autoimmune attack on the brain, resulting in inflammation and the onset of neuropsychiatric symptoms, including major depression, bipolar disorder and sudden mood changes.

Attention Deficit & Hyperactivity

While the cause of ADHD is still unknown, researchers believe genetics, diet, environmental factors, and infections play a role.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Chronic fatigue syndrome is often reported to be triggered by infections and the link between infections and autoimmune diseases is well established.

Autism Spectrum Disorder

The evidence that immune dysfunction likely plays a role in the etiology/pathophysiology of ASD (autism spectrum disorder) is becoming substantial.

Lyme Disease

In some individuals, an infection with Borrelia burgdorferi (the causative agent of Lyme disease) can ignite an autoimmune response, resulting in neurologic and psychiatric symptoms.

Epilepsy / Seizure Disorders

Mounting evidence also indicates that an immune dysfunction or abnormal autoimmune activity can elicit a sudden onset of seizures in adults with no history of the illness.

PANS & PANDAS

PANS and PANDAS are infection-triggered autoimmune disorders affecting the basal ganglia, which can result in a multitude of neuropsychiatric symptoms.

Why Test?

Evidence of autoimmune process

Test results provide objective, visual proof of an underlying infection-triggered autoimmune etiology – information that can be invaluable to clinicians as they determine an appropriate treatment regimen.

Presence of infection

CaMKII assay results can indicate the presence of a new onset or reactivation of infection or a subclinical or occult chronic infection.

Determines course of treatment

Treatment for autoimmune-induced neuropsychiatric symptoms involves eradicating the infection(s), reducing brain inflammation and treating the immune system with immunomodulatory therapies.

Improves chances of recovery

Early diagnosis and treatment has been shown to improve chances for a full recovery. ³ With proper treatment, symptoms/behaviors are often resolved with significant improvement in symptoms or a complete remission. ⁴

Reliable test results

The Autoimmune Brain Panel™ demonstrates an overall accuracy of 86%, sensitivity of 88%, and specificity of 83%. ⁵

Decades of research

The Panel was developed based on more than two decades of research conducted by Dr. Madeleine Cunningham at the University of Oklahoma, in conjunction with scientists from the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH).

References

Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2018) – “Mental Health”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org.
Howes, O. D., et al. (2022). “Treatment resistance in psychiatry: state of the art and new directions.” Mol Psychiatry 27(1): 58-72.
Shin Y-W, Lee S-T, Park K-I, et al. Treatment strategies for autoimmune encephalitis. Therapeutic Advances in Neurological Disorders. January 2018. doi:10.1177/1756285617722347. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1756285617722347
Brenton JN, Goodkin HP. Antibody-Mediated Autoimmune Encephalitis in Childhood. Pediatr Neurol. 2016 Jul;60:13-23. doi: 10.1016/j.pediatrneurol.2016.04.004. Epub 2016 Apr 12. PMID: 27343023. https://www.pedneur.com/article/S0887-8994(15)30139-9/pdf
Shimasaki C, Frye RE, Trifiletti R, Cooperstock M, Kaplan G, Melamed I, Greenberg R, Katz A, Fier E, Kem D, Traver D, Dempsey T, Latimer ME, Cross A, Dunn JP, Bentley R, Alvarez K, Reim S, Appleman J. Evaluation of the Cunningham Panel™ in pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with streptococcal infection (PANDAS) and pediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome (PANS): Changes in antineuronal antibody titers parallel changes in patient symptoms. J Neuroimmunol. 2020 Feb 15;339:577138. doi: 10.1016/j.jneuroim.2019.577138. Epub 2019 Dec 15. PMID: 31884258.