Twenty-eight patients suffered Campylobacter jejuni enteritis after eating raw 
chicken. Among them, only one patient developed Bickerstaff's brainstem 
encephalitis, who carried anti-GQ1b IgG antibodies. In contrast, none of the 
others did the autoantibodies. C. jejuni was cultured from all stool samples 
from five patients with enteritis alone. All the isolates had the same genotype, 
cst-II (Asn51), which are characteristic of strains isolated from Bickerstaff's 
brainstem encephalitis. These findings suggest that host susceptibility may play 
a role in inducing the production of anti-ganglioside antibodies and the 
development of Bickerstaff's brainstem encephalitis.