Correction: FDG–PET in patients with autoimmune encephalitis: a review of findings and new perspectives

Purpose The present review aims to discuss the role of the brain 18 F-FDG–PET and 18 F-FDG–PET/CT (FDG–PET) in diagnosis and follow-up of the autoimmune encephalitis (AE) patients, highlighting the main findings and the new perspectives on use of these methods in the study of the disease. Methods The literature search was performed in the following databases: PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, and Google Scholar, according to the PRISMA statement. The main terms of search were: “autoimmune encephalitis” AND “ 18 F-FDG–PET OR 18 F-FDG–PET/CT”, or the combination between the term “ 18 F-FDG–PET” OR “ 18 F-FDG–PET/CT” AND the antibodies receptors abbreviations (e.g., “NMDA”, “VGKC”, etc.). The methodological quality of the publications was assessed according to the QUADAS-2 criteria. Results The search of the articles found 56 main articles. These articles encompassed 1,462 patients with AE positive antibodies, from which 808 had brain FDG–PET images with 714 (88.67%) showing alterations. Furthermore, some AE antibodies have specific metabolic signatures, detected in the images, which are discussed in the text. Moreover, patients at different stages of the disease may present different brain metabolic patterns. The areas of more common hypermetabolism were basal ganglia, hippocampus, amygdala, and cerebellum. The areas of more common hypometabolism were the visual cortex and a diffuse cortical metabolism. Conclusions This extensive literature review shows the high sensitivity of FDG–PET and FDG–PET/CT in patients with AE. FDG–PET detects findings of hyper and hypometabolism which are suggestive of AE. Besides, AE caused by the different antibodies may present specific alterations which may be suggestive of each one. However, more prospective studies are necessary for these images become a standard diagnostic method of AE.