Martin Deutschland ^1* Irene Boettcher ² Markus Höltje ³ Harald Prüss ⁴

• ¹ Neurological Referral Service Berlin, Berlin, Germany
• ² Department for Small Animal, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Lower Saxony, Germany
• ³ Institute of Integrative Neuroanatomy, Charité Medical University of Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Germany
• ⁴ Department of Experimental Neurology, Clinic for Neurology with Experimental Neurology, Charité University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany

A six-year-old female spayed Podenco-crossbreed dog was presented with an unusual type of focal impaired awareness seizures including sensory ataxia and postictal rest. Magnetic resonance imaging examination revealed pre-and post-contrast agent T1-weighted bilateral symmetric hyperintensities in the lentiform nuclei and globus pallidus. Repeated cerebrospinal fluid sampling showed lymphatic pleocytosis. Cerebrospinal fluid immunoglobulin G autoantibodies to myelin basic protein (MBP) were detected by immunofluorescence examination with strong binding to myelinated fibre tracts. Absence of binding to MBP-depleted mouse brains confirmed MBP as an antigenic target. Although the patient has been showing minor seizure episodes every two months, despite the owners avoiding seizure triggers, the owners have declined medical treatment so far. This is to our knowledge the first description of MBP autoantibody-positive encephalitis in a dog.