While the conditions are similar in their symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment, GBS and CIDP differ in their root cause, duration, and overall impact on your health.
Cause
Condition Onset and Duration
“Guillain-Barré syndrome is a monophasic condition,” explains Richard Lewis, MD, a professor of neurology at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, which means that it is a single bout of illness that typically gets better and doesn’t return. On the other hand, “CIDP is an ongoing illness that requires ongoing treatment,” Dr. Lewis says.
A key indicator of GBS is that it reaches peak severity in four weeks or fewer, whereas CIDP is most severe at the eight-week mark or longer.
Prognosis
While GBS symptoms typically come on rapidly, last a few weeks, and do not recur, CIDP symptoms develop slowly over several months or longer and can last indefinitely. Symptoms of CIDP can continue to progress and relapse, requiring ongoing treatment.
One reason the conditions are often conflated is that there is a type of CIDP that can initially appear to be GBS — a disorder called acute onset CIDP, explains Lewis. “Patients with acute onset CIDP look like they could have Guillain-Barré syndrome, and it’s not until eight weeks later that you realize that the disorder is ongoing,” says Lewis. “It’s not necessarily a misdiagnosis — you simply can’t diagnose CIDP at four weeks because you haven’t had enough time.” What’s positive, says Lewis, is that the treatment you may have received for what was thought to be GBS is typically also effective for CIDP.
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