Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Vol. 22, No. 1, 1992 Brief Reports Brief Report: Autism and Herpes Simplex Encephalitis Mohammad Ghaziuddin, 1 Luke Y. Tsai, Laura Eilers, and N. Ghaziuddin Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Michigan Hospital, Ann Arbor INTRODUCTION It is now generally accepted that autism is a behavioral syndrome with an underlying organic pathology. It can be associated with a variety of dis- orders affecting the central nervous system, such as encephalitis. DeLong, Bean, and Brown (1981) described three children, ages between 5 and 11 years, who developed acute encephalitic illness accompanied by autistic fea- tures that resolved after clinical recovery. One of the patients had high serum herpes simplex titers, and a computerized tomography (CT) scan of the head revealed an extensive lesion of the temporal lobes, mainly on the left side. The other two patients had normal CT scans, and no etiological agent was defined. Gillberg (1986) described the case of a 14-year-old girl who developed "typical" autistic syndrome following an attack of herpes simplex encephalitis. The CT of the head showed widespread bilateral destruction of brain parenchyma and the temporal lobes, with some medial involvement of the lower parts of the parietal lobes. The autistic symptoms persisted long after the acute symptoms of herpes encephalitis, such as fever and alteration of consciousness, subsided. All the above cases met the criteria for autism except the typical age of onset. For example, DeLong et al.'s cases ranged in age from 5 to 11 1Address all correspondence to Mohammad Ghaziuddin, Division of Child Psychiatry, Taubman Center-Box 0390, Universityof Michigan Hospitals, 1500 East Medical Center Drive, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-0390. 107 0162-3257/92/0300-0107506.50/0 9 1992 Plenum Publishing Corporation