Moleculera Labs Patient Stories:

ABC News Nightline: Kids suffer from debilitating psychiatric episodes caused by strep throat

ABC News Nightline

Parker Barnes suffered from vocal tics, mood swings, OCD, speech regression, psychosis, hallucinations, depression, deterioration in school performance and handwriting, restrictive eating, and anxiety following multiple bouts of strep throat. Cunningham Panel™ test results helped clinicians determine appropriate treatments.


“20/20” extra with Nightline: Parents of child with PANDAS describe his descent into psychosis

20/20 extra

Parker Barnes’ parents describe their son as a reliable, popular, easygoing kid until he got strep throat at age 10. Within days he became debilitated by severe psychiatric and neurologic symptoms. “His immune system launched a campaign against his brain and within a matter of months he dropped into a psychosis,” says Parker’s dad, Brian.


“20/20” extra with Nightline: Parker Barnes seeks treatment and a young girl develops an aversion to eating

20/20 extra with Nightline

After visiting more than a dozen specialists, Parker Barnes and his mother travel across country to see pediatric neurologist Dr. Beth Latimer. A young girl is hospitalized and fed through a tube after she stops eating, afraid to swallow her own saliva.


Nightline: Mystery Diagnosis: Children Under Attack

(Air date: July 20, 2018)

Nightline: Mystery Diagnosis: Children Under Attack

Nightline takes an in-depth look at three children in crisis who were stricken with Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal infections (PANDAS) and fighting to regain their lives. Home videos show children engaging in frightening and disturbing behaviors. Parents say their children’s personalities changed seemingly overnight.


20/20: PANDAS

(Air date: July 20, 2018)

20/20: PANDAS

20/20 television program follows three families whose young children abruptly developed psychiatric and neurological problems, including tics, obsessions, anorexia, mood swings and bouts of rage, following a strep infection. After multiple misdiagnoses and inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations, the children were diagnosed with an infection-induced autoimmune encephalopathy. This treatable condition is often misdiagnosed.


Cunningham Panel™

Testing for infection-induced autoimmune encephalopathies

The Cunningham Panel™ is a blood test which measures the levels of circulating autoantibodies associated with certain neurological and psychiatric symptoms. Elevated levels indicate that a patient’s symptoms may be due to an infection-driven autoimmune condition, rather than a primary psychiatric disorder.


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