Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis(ADEM), an acute or subacute inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system, cause lesions in white matter. Since viral infection vaccination or upper respiratory infection frequently precedes
the
disease, it is also called as postinfectious encephalomyelitis, postvaccinial encephalomyelitis, postvaccinial leukoencephalitis. The pathophysiology is thought to be an autoimmune nature, mainly involving the myelin sheath, and one third of the
encephalitis patients are known to develope the disease, more frequent in children than in adults. As the clinical manifestations on laboratory findings is nonspecific it is difficult to differentiate from acute viral encephalitis, bacterial
encephalitis and other demyelinating disease by computed tomography. Therefore it requires to get T2 weighted image by magnetic resonance imaging to diagnoses by the monophasic high signal intensity.
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