Brain Mat

10/20/2026

Things That Make You Go Hmmm🤔

🦜When Birds Imitate PANDAS🐼

An Exposure to a very close contact with clinical signs of sickness and lungs full of the causative pathogen does not result in a clinically evident spread of infection as seen in the contact close or PCR evidence of the causative pathogen being present BUT it does cause an immune system Dysregulation that in at least some is fatal.



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Influenza A virus (IAV) infection during pregnancy is associated with stillbirth and preterm birth. We hypothesized that maternal IAV infection disrupts placental and fetal immune networks in ways that correlate with disease severity. Pregnant pigtail ...

10/19/2026

Drs Agalliu & Akcan write a simple description of research for us here.

Lots of us have wondered why PANDAS especially would be ignored when Sydenham's chorea is a real entity! Why the pushback? Research had never been done on HOW the immune cells attack the brain. This brief write up is good to save for your files or to take sections of it and share with your doctors.

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/09/22/3366387/0/en/new-research-provides-groundbreaking-look-into-brain-processes-behind-pans-pandas-sydenham-s-chorea.html

Doctors are not educated about immune attack and HOW it happens, especially neurologists, and we just need to inform them over and over.

https://pandasnetwork.org/strep/

10/14/2026

Document Document Document!

PANDAS / PANS is a Clinical diagnosis and the Timeline of your child’s medical history from birth to medical visit is the single most important piece of information you can provide to facilitate making the diagnosis. There is no information too irrelevant to be considered. Consider your child’s symptoms a mystery, the medical timeline & symptom assessment tool the clues and your medical provider the detective on the case🕵️‍♀️

This Validated Symptom Screening Tool from the Neuroimmune Foundation is free and can be accessed as frequently as needed. Regular use allows for tracking over time and results can be shared with your medical detective PRIOR to ALL medical visits.

The PANS/PANDAS Treatment Evaluation Checklist is a free digital tool to help parents, patients, and physicians track symptoms across time and responses to treatment. By filling this out, not only will you be able to track symptoms over time, but you can help us validate this tool by participating i...

10/06/2026

“Abstract: The triad of PANS, joint complaints, and family history of autoimmunity, including psoriasis, may represent a subset of PANS at heightened risk for IBD and additional immune-mediated disorders. For children with this triad, clinicians should have a low threshold to evaluate for gastrointestinal inflammation with biomarkers like hemoglobin, CRP, f***l calprotectin, and diagnostic endoscopy when indicated. PANS symptoms may improve with effective treatment of IBD. The high prevalence of joint complaints in our cohort and psoriasis in first-degree family members suggests this subset of PANS may share immune mechanisms with psoriasis and arthritis. Treatment strategies used in IBD and arthritis should be studied for potential application in PANS.”

Access the full article here: https://karger.com/dne/article/47/4/287/920619/Eight-Cases-of-Pediatric-Acute-Onset

09/30/2026

You can access the full guideline and more resources on our website here: neuroimmune.org/get-involved/pans-skepticism

09/28/2026

New brain scans show long COVID causes physical damage to the brain's dopamine system — causing brain fog, fatigue, and memory loss.

Using advanced positron emission tomography (PET) scans, researchers at Canada's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health compared 24 adults experiencing long COVID with healthy individuals.

They analyzed a crucial protein called VMAT2, which acts as a marker for the integrity of dopamine-releasing nerve terminals in the brain's striatum. The results were striking: those suffering from long COVID showed significantly reduced dopamine markers across all major regions of the striatum, representing a 16% to 20% deficit compared to healthy controls.

The location of the damage directly matched patients' specific symptoms. Lower dopamine signals in the ventral striatum were linked to severe apathy and loss of motivation, while reductions in the dorsal putamen and caudate putamen correlated with slower physical movements and impaired memory.

While it is still unclear whether this neural injury is permanent or if the cells have died, the findings build on previous research showing high levels of brain inflammation in the same areas.

Crucially, these insights could open the door to testing dopamine-boosting treatments to finally address the debilitating neurological toll of long COVID.

source: Liu, Y. K., et al. (2026). Loss of vesicular monoamine transporter 2 in striatum of long COVID and relationship to neuropsychiatric symptoms. eBioMedicine.