Help finding literature please
 

Hi all,

I've been trying to find literature saying that steroids and ivig help idiopathic sfn but I'm not having much luck. Anything that looks promising I can't access. I can only read the abstakt. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Anybody, have some articles that they have found that they would be willing to post then link to?
I'm trying to give my neuro proof so that she can't say " it only helps demyelination neuropathies" so the answer is no

Hi Canagirl, as far as I understand, IVIG, steroids and other immunological treatments can help SFN only when it is cause by immunological disorders. All of these treatments got serious side effects and some of them are also very expensive.

I can highly relate to your pain and despair but from my long experience with doctors it seems very few of them would be ready to listen to suggestion based on the internet, not to mention, read papers.

I suppose the best chance would be to try convincing your doc to try a short term usage of prednisone. If it would help it might easier to justify other immunological treatments.
This paper might help you convince your GP
Dabby et al 2006, Acute steroid responsive small-fiber sensory neuropathy: a newentity?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16519781

Do you know how to search google scholar for papers ? http://scholar.google.com
At the bottom of each item you can find a link to all of the versions that were found, pressing on it would open a list of locations, some of them might be free.

If you find relevant abstracts and can’t access the full text, PM me with the links of the abstracts and I might be able to access the papers.

I plunged into the rabbit hole of abstracts yet again off this thread. 600 mg of lyrica, was what they found to be a useful amount with negligible side effects...

For me 300 mg daily was useful for awhile, but was as high as I could go without putting up the car keys. At any rate, the cognitive give back was too great and diminushing returns kicked in as well- whether increased symptoms or actually decreased effectiveness I am unsure.

I am just unsure I could operate at 600mg. I guess it just impresses the point of how different we all react to medicines and treatments in general.

I will put this link up again.....

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/cv.html

These are the 4 types of sensation afferent fibers. 3 of them are myelinated to some degree.... only the C fibers are unmyelinated.

Still hoping, thanks for that article. I wasn't able to open but the abstract seems promising

Hi Canagirl, the article that still hoping has posted is the one that I was referring to too. I have seen a couple like it too. I just read it again and it says they responded to oral prednisone, I am having the prednisone infusion, so I hope this has the same , I believe is supposed to be safer.

Canagirl, I am going into hospital for 5 days on the 14th September, I will let you know how I get on and see if it helps.:)

I hope you can convince your neuro to let you try it. As I have mentioned before, with the non-length dependent sfn , I have read if no cause can be found they suspect an inflammatory process so it would be worth giving it a try.:)

I have got a pdf with the full text but I didn't find how to attach it here or in private message. If you send me your email address I can send it to you.

I don't think you are going to find much evidence for IVIG and idiopathic SFN in the scientific literature. You might get lucky and find a case study, but understand that it is considered a low level of evidence. Your neuro is going to want to see several journal articles with a higher level evidence, especially if he is a stickler.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0022268/
This systematic review pretty much says that the evidence that IVIG works for neuropathy was insufficient other than for conditions like MS or GBS (and a few other conditions as well). This is likely what your neuro was referring to.

You might try to sift through Cochine Review; doctors take opinions from this review very seriously.
http://www.cochrane.org/

As previously mentioned, Google Scholar is a great way to find full text journal articles.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?h...%2C50&as_sdtp=

Not only should you search pubmed, but you should search all NCBI databases.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gquery/?...europathy+ivig

Some of the two most useful NCBI databases will likely be Pubmed Central and Pubmed Health. Learn to use the Advanced Search/Search Builder to optimize what you are looking for in any given database.