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The human immune system is an amazing system that is constantly on the alert protecting us from

sicknesses. Thousands of white blood cells travel in our circulatory system destroying all foreign

substances that could cause harm to our body or to any of the millions of processes going on inside. Now

imagine a condition where this awesome system turns against the most complex organ in the human body,

the brain. Deadly as it is, this condition is known as Rasmussen’s encephalitis.

The meaningful research on Rasmussen’s encephalitis was begun (unintentionally) by Scott Rogers

and Lorise Gahring, two neurologists, who were at the time measuring the distribution of glutamate

receptors in the brain. Later on when more provocative information was found they enlisted the help of

James McNamara and Ian Andrews, epilepsy experts at Duke University Medical Center.

The details on Rasmussen’s encephalitis were very bleak at the time when the men began their

research. All that was known is that Rasmussen’s encephalitis was a degenerative disease of the brain

that caused seizures, hemiparesis, and dementia normally in the first ten years of life. The seizures that

were caused by Rasmussen’s encephalitis were unstoppable by normal anti-seizure drugs used

conventionally. What the worst part of the disease was that the pathogenesis for it were not known and

even worse was how it developed.

The first clue was delivered when Rogers and Gahring were trying to register the distribution of the

glutamate receptors using antibodies, that tag on to the receptor itself. The proteins that make up the

glutamate receptors(GluR) are only found inside the blood brain...