Pure sensory Guillain-Barré syndrome: A case report and review of the literature

Sensory Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is an acute demyelinating neuropathy that presents clinically with involvement of the sensory peripheral nerve only. To date, <10 cases of pure sensory GBS have been reported; thus, the clinical and pathological features of sensory variant GBS are yet to be well characterized. The current study reports the case of a 43-year-old female that presented with acute, symmetric and monophasic sensory neuropathy, without motor weakness. Patient history, clinical examination, routine nerve conduction studies and sural nerve biopsy were reviewed. All the observations were consistent with a diagnosis of pure sensory GBS. In particular, the pathological features of the sural nerve biopsy revealed that the form of regenerated nerve fibers have complete structure of myelinated nerve fascicles, and these myelinated nerve fibers are thicker than other parts of the biopsy. The patient received small-dose (20 mg/day) prednisone initially, but without any benefit. Satisfactory improvements were observed with one course of intravenous immunoglobulin.