New strategies in the management of Guillain-Barré syndrome

Abstract

Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is an acute and usually monophasic, neurological, demyelinating disease. Although most patients have good outcomes without sequelae after conventional plasma exchange and intravenous immunoglobulin therapy, 20% of patients continue to have severe disease and 5% die of their disease. Therefore, there is an obvious need for more acceptable and efficacious therapies. Experimental autoimmune neuritis (EAN) is the classical animal model for GBS. As there is no specific drug for GBS, several drugs targeting the humoral and cellular components of the immune response have been used to treat EAN in the endeavour to find new treatment alternatives for GBS. This review focused on some new strategies for GBS, which have been reported but have not yet been widely used, and on the main drugs which have been investigated in EAN.