Posted at: 10/13/2009 7:26 PM
By: Axel Gumbel

Medical Edge: Guillain-Barre Syndrome

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- Imagine you're healthy one day, and can barely move the next.

The symptoms came on fast. Within weeks the woman you're about to meet went from being completely healthy to lying in the intensive care unit, unable to move, struggling to breathe.

She�s a victim of Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

Cooking breakfast is a simple task, but to Beth DeVries, it's much more.

"I couldn�t even hold the egg, let alone crack it," she says.

Beth survived two episodes of recurrent Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

Symptoms started in her feet. Numbness and weakness progressed quickly throughout her body.

"I walked into the kitchen and I fell on the floor flat on my face and I couldn't get up. I couldn't move," she recalls.

Beth ended up in the intensive care unit.

"I said goodbye to my parents three times because I didn't think I was going to make it through the night," DeVries says.

Father and son team Drs. Peter and James Dyck study Guillain-Barre Syndrome and related illnesses. They say the disease usually happens after a viral infection.

�Your immune system gets confused. so instead of attacking the virus, it attacks your nerves. And usually what happens is it causes Demyelination. Myelin is insulation around nerve fibers," says. Mayor Clinic Dr. P. James Dyck.

It helps nerves conduct signals.

If your immune system attacks nerves, the insulation breaks down.

Nerves don't conduct as fast as normal, or they don't conduct at all.

Muscles become weak or simply don't work.

Guillain-Barre is very scary, but most people, like Beth, do recover.

Treatment involves what's called Plasmapheresis, during which blood is washed and returned to the body.

Patients may also have infusions of immunoglobulin. Both prevent the immune system from attacking nerves.

After more than a year in the hospital and many months of recovery, Beth is almost back to normal.

To learn more: http://www.mayoclinic.org/guillain-barre/