CANINE MENINGOENCEPHALITIS: WHAT DO WE KNOW?

摘要

Meningoencephalitis is a common condition m dogs. Although there have been a multitude of infectious organisms documented to cause meningoencephalitis in this species, in the vast majority of cases an infectious organism cannot be documented. There arc a number of specific syndromes within this group of so-called "sterile" meningoencephalitides, including steroid-responsive meningitis-arteritis (SRMA), granulomatous meningoencephalitis (GME), necrotizing meningoencephalitis (NME) and necrotizing leukoencephalitis (NLE, also known as necrotizing encephalitis). A less common variant is a primarily eosinophilic meningoencephalitis (EME). Although there are characteristics that differentiate these disease conditions from one another, there are also cases that blur the lines between these diagnoses, and clinicians and researchers are divided on whether to "lump" or "split" these conditions.1'2 In addition, despite having some characteristic distributions (for example, GME preferentially affects the medulla, cerebellum and cervical spinal cord, while NME affects the forebrain), without histopathology of affected tissue (or even with tissue in some cases), arriving at a firm diagnosis can be very difficult. For this reason, many clinicians use the term "meningoencephalitis of unknown etiology" (MUE) or "meningoencephalitis of unknown origin" (MUO) to refer to clinical cases diagnosed with meningoencephalitis with imaging and/or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) evaluation.