Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyradiculoneuropathy and Related Disorders

The first case of recurrent neuritis was published by Eichhorst in 1890 (1). In 1958, Austin (2) described steroid responsiveness, recurrence and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) protein elevation. Dyck and colleagues (3) described the clinicopathological findings of monophasic progression, steady deterioration, stepwise progression and recurrence, with histologic peripheral nervious system (PNS) inflammation, and demyelination. Dyck and Arnason (4) termed the disorder chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (CIDP), which accounted for 21% of initially undiagnosed patients with peripheral neuropathy at the Mayo Clinic (5), and 13 to 20% of cases of immune-mediated neuropathy referred to in academic centers worldwide (6).