What Is the Long-Term Prognosis for Patients with CIDP?

Recognizing chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) is important because the condition is potentially treatable with prednisone and other immunomodulating therapies. However, the variety of clinical patterns and evolution of this disease make its outcome difficult to predict. These investigators analyzed clinical patterns, biopsy findings, and functional capacity in 100 patients (predominately older men) who met clinical and either electrophysiologic or biopsy criteria for CIDP.

Only 20% of patients had an immunological trigger; 11% had another autoimmune disorder; 5% had superimposed CNS demyelination. On CSF analysis, 86% showed markedly elevated protein. Seventy-four percent met nerve conduction criteria for demyelination…