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Intravenous Immunoglobulin and Quality of Life
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To the Editor: The clinical review by Dr Dalakas1 underscores that intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) is the treatment of choice in Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), multifocal motor neuropathy, and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) and that it is useful instead of plasma exchange for management of myasthenia gravis. On the other hand, he stresses the necessity of further studies of dose-finding effects, pharmacoeconomics, and quality of life (QOL) assessments to improve the evidence base for clinical practice.
We believe that our research is a step in this direction. We prospectively followed up 25 patients treated with IVIG to evaluate the early effects on their health-related QOL.2 The patients (15 male, 10 female; mean age, 51.3 [SD, 16.8] years; range, 17-77), were admitted to our Neurology department: 8 with CIDP, 3 with GBS, 3 with multifocal motor neuropathy, 1 with multineuropathy of cranial nerves, and 10 with myasthenia gravis. All were treated with . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Luca Padua, MD, PhD
lpadua@rm.unicatt.it Fondazione Pro Iuventute Istituto Don C. Gnocchi Rome, Italy
Irene Aprile, MD;
Pietro Caliandro, MD;
Costanza Pazzaglia, MD;
Pietro Tonali, MD
Institute of Neurology Università Cattolica Rome
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Intravenous Immunoglobulin and Quality of LifeReply
Marinos C. Dalakas
JAMA. 2004;292(12):1429-1430.
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