Aphasia and herpes virus encephalitis: a case study

Abstract

CONTEXT: Meningoencephalitis early in life, of any etiology, is a risk factor for development of subsequent sequelae, which may be of physical, psychiatric, behavioral or cognitive origin. Anomia is a language abnormality frequently found in such cases, and other language deficits are rarely described. The aim of this study was to describe the cognitive and linguistic manifestations following a case of herpetic meningoencephalitis in a 13-year-old patient with eight years of schooling. CASE REPORT: The patient underwent a speech-language audiology assessment nine months after the neurological diagnosis. The battery of tests included the Montreal-Toulouse Language Assessment test protocol (MT Beta-86, modified), the description from the Cookie Theft task of the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE), an informal assessment of the patient's logical and mathematical reasoning, and the neuropsychological subtests from the WAIS-III scale, which assess working memory. The patient presented mixed aphasia, impairment of short-term memory and working memory, and dyscalculia. This case also presented severe cognitive and linguistic deficits. Prompt diagnosis is crucial, in order to enable timely treatment and rehabilitation of this neurological infection and minimize the cognitive deficits caused by the disease.

Postseizure aphasia in Wernicke's encephalopathy: a case report and review of literature

“…A 2012 Brazilian case report details anomic aphasia, or the misidentification of objects using related words (saying “comb” instead of “hair”) in a 13-year-old patient with herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE). 9 Another case report from Italy notes a similar difficulty in naming objects in patients with HSE, particularly living objects (fruits, vegetables, and animals). 10 None of the elements of our patient’s exam are consistent with anomic aphasia.…”

Herpes simplex viral encephalitis with acute memory impairment and low cellular cerebrospinal fluid: A case report with systematic review literature

“…Of these, nine articles were not in English, and 15 did not meet the inclusion criteria of reporting an acute onset of memory dysfunction. Finally, we included 21 articles [8] , [9] , [10] , [11] , [12] , [13] , [14] , [15] , [16] , [17] , [18] , [19] , [20] , [21] , [22] , [23] , [24] , [25] , [26] , [27] , [28] reporting 22 cases in this review. The age of the patients ranged from 13 to 78, and 7 cases [9] , [10] , [14] , [18] , [19] , [22] , [28] were females as shown in the PRISMA figure ( Fig.…”

Cognitive functioning of a patient with herpes simplex virus encephalitis – a case study. An exemplary paper for the State Examination in the field of clinical psychology – neuropsychology

“…Behavioural disorders are seen in almost half of the patients (45%), while aphasia affects 40% of those infected (Szczudlik et al, 2004). As for language functions, patients with lesions located mainly in the left hemisphere show amnestic aphasia-like deficits in the form of difficulty updating words in spontaneous speech and impaired confrontational naming (Soares-Ishigaki et al, 2012). These patients also present with significant memory loss, covering both the pre-and postmorbid period.…”