[pstinard]

Originally Posted by pstinard

They don't really know what causes it yet. If I can find any more specific information, I'll post it. Here are a couple of general articles about NME:

https://wagwalking.com/condition/nec...goencephalitis

https://www.petmd.com/dog/conditions...breed_specific

Here's a link to a 2008 article that studied the causes of NME in pugs: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...08.0137.x/full. I'm sure it's behind a paywall, so I'll quote the relevant parts:

Vaccination status was examined in NME and non-NME groups, because antigen exposure has been speculated to play a role in the development of various encephalitides, including NME.1,2,16 The proportion of dogs vaccinated within 1 month of disease onset and the duration between vaccination and onset were not significantly different between groups. Furthermore, only a small proportion of NME dogs (0.11) were vaccinated within 1 month of onset. Pugs with NME and a history of parvovirus vaccination had a higher death rate (hazard ratio = 2.35; Table 4), but this result was not significant (P= .053). If parvovirus vaccination is involved in the pathogenesis of NME, mechanisms are most likely immune mediated because dogs in this report had no identifiable parvovirus in brain tissue as assessed by PCR. In humans, vaccination has been associated with various immune-mediated encephalopathies.42–44 Measles virus vaccine, for example, has been speculated to predispose individuals to MS, whereas mumps vaccine has been associated with a form of postvaccinal aseptic meningitis.42,43 Despite these associations, the risk of autoimmune encephalitis after vaccination is believed to be exceedingly low in humans, in some cases on the order of 1 case per 1,000,000 vaccinations.42 The lack of clear association between vaccination and NME in this report is therefore not unexpected, especially considering the small sample size.

Based on our data, NME appears to be a common cause of intracranial signs in Pugs. Pugs with NME seem to be predominantly young adult, female dogs. Although NME lesions were most common in the prosencephalon (60/60 dogs) as has been previously reported,1 a high proportion of Pugs also had involvement of the brainstem (24/59) and cerebellum (23/58). There was no obvious seasonal or geographic distribution, although most cases identified were from the western, midwestern, and southeastern regions of the United States. There was no apparent relationship between vaccination and NME, although data concerning hazard ratio and parvovirus vaccination suggest the need for additional investigations. CSF analysis typically identifies a lymphocytic pleocytosis (mean WBC count 120 cells/μL; range, 0–540). Mean survival time in this population of necropsy-confirmed cases was 93 days.

No significant association between vaccination and development of NME in that study, but they agree that larger studies should be done.