REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory Disorders : Autoimmune Disorders
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Pivotal Role of Cytokines in Autoimmune DiseasesView all 15 articles
The Gut-Brain Axis: Potential Reshaping the Future of Anti-NMDAR Encephalitis Treatment
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Neurology, First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) encephalitis is a type of autoimmune encephalitis with a high disability rate. However, its pathogenesis remains unclear and warrants further elucidation to facilitate the development of effective treatment strategies. The gut microbiota can increase the permeability of the intestinal and blood-brain barriers by altering the levels of beneficial bacterial metabolites and pro-inflammatory factors. These alterations facilitate the migration of inflammatory factors and pathogenic autoantibodies to the central nervous system, thereby affecting the progression of anti-NMDAR encephalitis. Therefore, interventions targeting the gut microbiota may be effective for regulating the pathogenesis of anti-NMDAR encephalitis. In this review, we discuss the association between an altered gut microbiota and associated changes in metabolite levels in patients with anti-NMDAR encephalitis. To our knowledge, this review is the first to outline the effects of the gut microbiota on cytokine levels in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid of patients with anti-NMDAR encephalitis, which may provide a new therapeutic perspective for this fatal disease.
Keywords: anti-NMDAR encephalitis, gut microbial compositional shift, Metabolites, Blood-Brain Barrier, Therapeutic potential
Received: 17 Jul 2025; Accepted: 14 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shen, Xie, Xie, Wang, Han, Zhou, Zhang, Fu and Xie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nanchang Xie, xienanchang2001@163.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.