Guillain-Barre Syndrome

A detailed Summary of Guillain-Barre Syndrome


Guillain-Barre Syndrome, (also called acute idiopathic polyneuritis, and Landry's ascending paralysis) is a disorder in which the body's immune system attacks part of the peripheral nerves, those outside the brain and spinal cord.

Symptoms of this disorder include weakness or tingling in the legs, sometimes the weakness or tingling spread to the arms and upper body. These symptom's then increase in intensity, until the muscles cannot be used at all and the patient is almost totally paralyzed, most patients reach this stage at about two or three weeks after the start. About thirty percent of the patients are often put on a respirator to help with breathing.

Guillain-Barre Syndrome can affect anybody. It can strike at any age and any gender, both are equally prone to it. This syndrome is uncommon but not rare, only about one out of a thousand people get it. There are about 12 cases per million people per year. Severe Guillian-Barre syndrome is life-threading and is fatal in three percent or four percent of cases.

Nobody knows why Guillian-Barre Syndrome strikes some people, and not others. They don't even know what triggers the disease or what sets it in motion. Scientist do know that the body's immune syst


em begins to attack the body, causing autoimmune disease. Unlike other autoimmune diseases, no specific genetic makeup has been discovered which predisposes someone to develop Guillian-Barre syndrome. Usually the cells of the immune system attack only foreign material and invading organisms, but with Guillain-Barre Syndrome the immune system starts to destroy the myelin sheath that surrounds the axons (axons are long, thin extensions of the nerve cells; they carry nerve signals) of many peripheral nerves. Also about two-thirds of these cases the person recalls a viral infection one to six weeks before having Guillian-Barre.

When Guillain-Barre is preceded by a viral infection, it is possible that the virus has changed the nature of the cells in the nervous system so that the immune system treats them as foreign cells, and will try to get ride of them. It is also possible that the virus makes the immune system itself less discriminating about what cells it recognizes as it own, allowing some of the immune cells, such as certain kinds of lymphocytes, to attack the myelin.

There is no known cure for Guillian-Barre syndrome. However there are therapies that lessen the strength of the syndrome and accelera

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