. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Jun 1.

Published in final edited form as: Psychiatr Clin North Am. 2015 Mar 18;38(2):309–322. doi: 10.1016/j.psc.2015.02.002

Table 1.

Differential diagnosis of potential mimics of neurodegenerative disease

Category	Examples

Vascular	Infarct-related, primary/secondary CNS vasculitis, venous sinus thrombosis

Autoimmune	Hashimoto’s encephalopathy (steroid responsive encephalopathy), paraneoplastic limbic encephalitis, neurosarcoidosis, demyelinating disease (e.g. acute demyelinating encephalomyelitis; ADEM), celiac sprue, neuropsychiatric systemic lupus erythematosus

Neoplastic	Primary/secondary CNS lymphoma, primary brain neoplasm, CNS/leptomeninges metastases

Infectious	Herpes simplex, Treponema. pallidum, Borrelia burgdorferi, Tropheryma whipplei, Crytptococcus neoformans, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML)

Prion disease	Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD)

Toxic-metabolic	Heavy metal intoxication (e.g., lead, mercury, arsenic), vitamin deficiencies (B12, thiamine), medication-related, end-stage liver disease, pontine/extrapontine central myelinolysis, inborn errors of metabolism (e.g. acute intermittent porphyria, adult-onset leukodystrophies, mitochondrial disease), hypo/hyperthyroidism

Epileptic	Non-convulsive status epilepticus (various underlying etiologies)