Abstract:

Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) is an immune-mediated demyelinating central nervous system disorder. There are few reports in the literature regarding the lifelong cognitive process in children who are affected by ADEM. A few studies and case reports have reported mild deterioration in some cognitive functions such as attention, verbal memory, short-term memory, information processing, processing speed, impulse control, executive functions, and spatial-visual skills after ADEM. Children who experienced ADEM have also been reported to display difficulties in learning and deterioration in academic skills. Specific learning disorder (SLD) is a condition of inadequate reading and/or writing levels and/or mathematics skills that cannot be explained with the child’s age, intelligent quotient (IQ), or education. Although genetic factors have been implicated in the etiology of SLD, The exact etiological factors are still unknown. ADEM, especially in the very early childhood period, has been accused of immaturity of learning skills in the affected children and these patients have been reported to tend to suffer from deteriorating information processing, leading to a blockage in their social development and their learning skills. We report a child who presented to our clinic for difficulties in learning and was detected in his medical history to have suffered from ADEM when he was two years of age. The child was diagnosed with SLD after the examination. We discuss the possible effect of ADEM on the etiology of SLD. A correlation has been found between ADEM and SLD in the recent literature though it is not clear and further prospective cohort studies designed with larger samples are recommended to explore this reported correlation between ADEM and SLD

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