Good news, and hope for painful neuropathy!


"This study is wildly surprising," says Oaklander.
"Although not a controlled clinical trial, it is paradigm-changing because the fact that an
immunomodulatory treatment was effective is the strongest evidence so far that some people have an
autoimmune cause of SFPN that can be improved. This paper offers not only a new class of treatments
but also further evidence of a new disease discovery. While immunotherapy isn't for everyone with
SFPN, patients with idiopathic SFPN should be systematically screened for all common causes, push
their physicians to identify their specific cause and discuss disease-modifying treatment options.
I'd also urge insurance companies, which are reluctant to cover this expensive treatment, to be
more willing to consider covering three-month trials in appropriately diagnosed patients."

An associate professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, Oaklander stresses that this "real-
world" retrospective case study needs to be validated in a prospective, randomized clinical trial,
something her team is seeking grant funding to conduct. She notes that learning more about the
mechanisms behind aaSFPN and tracking outcomes of other treatments should lead to less expensive
and easier to manage immunotherapies than intravenous immunoglobulin. In the meantime, patients
with SFPN and their physicians can find more information, including a list of recommended blood
tests, at Neuropathy Commons | Translating today's discoveries into tomorrow's cures.
Provided by Massachusetts General Hospital
APA citation: Autoimmunity may underlie newly discovered painful nerve-damage disorder (2017,
November 8) retrieved 15 November 2017 from 404 Error - The Page Cannot be Found
underlie-newly-painful-nerve-damage.html







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