Barr virus paralysis

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. For Healthcare Providers. Minus Related Pages. On This Page. Links with this icon indicate that you are leaving the CDC website. Most people with the condition must be hospitalized to receive treatment.

The exact cause of Guillain-Barre syndrome is unknown. But two-thirds of patients report symptoms of an infection in the six weeks preceding.

These include respiratory or a gastrointestinal infection or Zika virus. There's no known cure for Guillain-Barre syndrome, but several treatments can ease symptoms and reduce the duration of the illness. Patients may experience lingering effects from it, such as weakness, numbness or fatigue. Guillain-Barre syndrome often begins with tingling and weakness starting in your feet and legs and spreading to your upper body and arms.

As Guillain-Barre syndrome progresses, muscle weakness can evolve into paralysis. People with Guillain-Barre syndrome usually experience their most significant weakness within two weeks after symptoms begin.

Once thought to be a single disorder, Guillain-Barre syndrome is now known to occur in several forms. The main types are:. Call your doctor if you have mild tingling in your toes or fingers that doesn't seem to be spreading or getting worse.

Seek emergency medical help if you have any of these severe signs or symptoms:. Guillain-Barre syndrome is a serious condition that requires immediate hospitalization because it can worsen rapidly.

The sooner appropriate treatment is started, the better the chance of a good outcome. The exact cause of Guillain-Barre syndrome isn't known. The disorder usually appears days or weeks after a respiratory or digestive tract infection. Rarely, recent surgery or vaccination can trigger Guillain-Barre syndrome. Recently, there have been cases reported following infection with the Zika virus. In Guillain-Barre syndrome, your immune system — which usually attacks only invading organisms — begins attacking the nerves.

The damage prevents nerves from transmitting signals to your brain, causing weakness, numbness or paralysis. Guillain-Barre syndrome can affect all age groups. But your risk increases as you age. Recently, some countries worldwide reported an increased incidence of GBS following infection with the Zika virus.

Unexplained sensations often occur first, such as tingling in the feet or hands, or even pain especially in children , often starting in the legs or back. Children will also show symptoms with difficulty walking and may refuse to walk.

These sensations tend to disappear before the major, longer-term symptoms appear. Weakness on both sides of the body is the major symptom that prompts most people to seek medical attention. The weakness may first appear as difficulty climbing stairs or with walking. Symptoms often affect the arms, breathing muscles, and even the face, reflecting more widespread nerve damage. Occasionally symptoms start in the upper body and move down to the legs and feet.

Most people reach the greatest stage of weakness within the first two weeks after symptoms appear; by the third week 90 percent of affected individuals are at their weakest. These symptoms can increase in intensity over a period of hours, days, or weeks until certain muscles cannot be used at all and, when severe, the person is almost totally paralyzed.

In these cases, the disorder is life-threatening—potentially interfering with breathing and, at times, with blood pressure or heart rate. There is a central conducting core in the nerves called the axon that carries an electric signal. The axon an extension of a nerve cell is surrounded by a covering, like insulation, called myelin.

The myelin sheath surrounding the axon speeds up the transmission of nerve signals and allows the transmission of signals over long distances. Weakness When we move, for example, an electric signal from the brain travels through and out of the spinal cord to peripheral nerves along muscles of the legs, arms, and elsewhere—called motor nerves. In most cases of GBS, the immune system damages the myelin sheath that surrounds the axons of many peripheral nerves; however, it also may also damage the axons themselves.

As a result, the nerves cannot transmit signals efficiently and the muscles begin to lose their ability to respond to the brain's commands. This causes weakness. The weakness seen in GBS usually comes on quickly and worsens over hours or days. Symptoms are usually equal on both sides of the body called symmetric.

In addition to weak limbs, muscles controlling breathing can weaken to the point that the person must be attached to a machine to help support breathing. Sensation changes Since nerves are damaged in GBS, the brain may receive abnormal sensory signals from the rest of the body.

This results in unexplained, spontaneous sensations, called paresthesias, that may be experienced as tingling, a sense of insects crawling under the skin called formications , and pain.

Various ideas have been proposed to explain how GBS develops. According to this explanation, molecules on some nerves are very similar to or mimic molecules on some microorganisms. When those microbes infect someone, the immune system correctly attacks them. And if the microbe and myelin look similar, the immune system makes a mistake and attacks the myelin.

Different mechanisms may explain how the molecular mimicry concept may work. The immune system treats these nerves as foreign bodies and mistakenly attacks them. It is also possible that the virus makes the immune system itself less discriminating and no longer able to recognize its own nerves.

Some parts of the immune system—special white blood cells called lymphocytes and macrophages—perceive myelin as foreign and attack it. In some forms of GBS, antibodies made by the person to fight a Campylobacter jejuni bacterial infection attack axons in the motor nerves. This causes acute motor axonal neuropathy, which is a variant of GBS that includes acute paralysis and a loss of reflexes without sensory loss.

Campylobacter infections can be caused by ingesting contaminated food or from other exposures. This slows nerve conduction and causes paralysis. Scientists are investigating various GBS subtypes to find why the immune system reacts abnormally in this syndrome and other autoimmune diseases. While GBS comes on rapidly over days to weeks, and the person usually recovers, other disorders develop slowly and can linger or recur.

In AIDP, the immune response damages the myelin coating and interferes with the transmission of nerve signals. It is characterized by abnormal muscle coordination with poor balance and clumsy walking, weakness or paralysis of the eye muscles, and absence of the tendon reflexes. Like GBS, symptoms may follow a viral illness. Additional symptoms include generalized muscle weakness and respiratory failure.

Most individuals with Miller Fisher syndrome have a unique antibody that characterizes the disorder. Related peripheral nerve disorders with slow onset and persisting or recurrent symptoms include chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy CIDP and multifocal motor neuropathy.