On the mechanism of high-dose intravenous immunoglobulin treatment of patients with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy.

A proportion of patients with a chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) improves after polyvalent intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) treatment. When anti-neuroblastoma cell line (NBL) antibodies are present, they decrease or disappear after IVIg treatment. Purified IgM anti-NBL antibodies from a CIDP patient were inhibited by F(ab')2 of IVIg and by F(ab')2 of a patient recovered from Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). Inhibition of anti-NBL antibodies was also found among sera from normal individuals. This suggests that the self-limiting character of GBS and the therapeutic effect of IVIg in CIDP are dependent on suppression of auto-antibodies. This suppression may be mediated by anti-idiotypes present in recovered GBS patients and in the normal donor population contributing to IVIg.