Although the most recorded adverse events of COVID-19 vaccination includes local injection site effects like pain, redness or swelling, headache, fever and chills, fatigue, myalgia and arthralgia, the rare neurological side effects such as encephalitis has been reported. We conducted a thorough search through PubMed and applicable literatures were selected. All the reported cases of encephalitis in our study were announced after AstraZeneca (13), Pfizer-BioNTech (5), Moderna (3), Sinopharm (2) and Sputnik V (1) vaccination, involving 15 females, 8 males and 1 transmale, ranging in age between 16 and 77 years. The study includes cases of 1 pediatric, 9 young adults and 14 older adults. Most of the patients showed a symptom onset that started within a week post vaccination where 15 patients developed symptoms following the first dose, 5 patients following the second dose and 1 patient following the booster dose. Fever and headache were the most frequent presenting symptom. In most of the cases, CSF analysis, EEG and other neuroimaging reports showed abnormality. Most of the patients were treated with IV methylprednisolone and some of the patients had undergone plasmapheresis. Majority of the patients showed positive response to the treatment and their clinical conditions improved. Out of 24 patients, 2 had died.

Keywords : COVID-19, corona virus, vaccination, encephalitis.