Clinical Note: An adult patient with rubella encephalitis

Encephalitis is a complex and severe neurological syndrome and the identification of its etiologic agents is useful to determine the treatment strategy and anticipate the illness course. However, according to many studies, the etiologic agent was not identified in 48-63% of encephalitis’ cases. Rubella is a rare etiologic agent, causing encephalitis only in one in 5000-6000 cases during previous epidemics. Rubella encephalitis (RE) almost always occurs in unvaccinated children and accounts for 2.9-7.4% of childhood encephalitis according to recent studies, even though rubella has become very rare after universal childhood vaccination. We present an uncommon case of RE in an immunocompetent unvaccinated adult patient to highlight the likelihood of its occurrence in the adult population even without clinical evidence of rubella infection.