Massage & Bodywork

JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2017

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GBS is the most common form of acute multinerve infection in the Western Hemisphere. Even so, it is relatively rare, affecting between 3,000 and 6,000 people in the United States each year. Mature adults are affected more often than other age groups, and men are slightly more frequently affected than women. Most people who develop GBS have full or nearly full recovery, but 3–5 percent die from respiratory failure, blood clots, infection, or cardiac arrest. Epidemiologists are watching to see if the spread of Zika in North America will also be linked to increasing rates in GBS diagnosis here; so far, that has not come about. This may be because the precise cause-and-effect links between Zika exposure and GBS are more complicated than first thought. Some evidence suggests that a person is more likely to develop post-Zika GBS if they have also been exposed to dengue fever—a closely related viral infection that is spread by the same species of mosquitoes that are most likely to carry Zika. As of this writing, only a few cases of GBS in the United States have been linked to Zika exposure, but that number may increase. C h e c k o u t A B M P 's l a t e s t n e w s a n d b l o g p o s t s . Av a i l a b l e a t w w w. a b m p . c o m . 39 When it was first documented in the early twentieth century, GBS was considered to be a single condition. Now, several subtypes have been identified, but they all have the same qualities of being autoimmune attacks on myelin in the peripheral nervous system, usually triggered by a preceding bacterial or viral infection. In the United States, the most common form of GBS is called acute inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy—a mouthful, but this simply means that it has a sudden onset, and it affects the myelin of multiple peripheral nerves. Other forms of GBS are more prevalent in other parts of the world. It is rare for GBS to develop without some triggering event—usually an infection with some organism that has some markers that resemble myelin. Until recently, the most common pathogenic trigger for GBS in the United States has been exposure to Campylobacter jejuni, a bacterium that frequently causes food poisoning. In some cases, the trigger for GBS does not appear to be an infection. Instead, it could be a reaction to a vaccine, surgery, pregnancy, or trauma. In some cases, the trigger for GBS does not appear to be an infection. Instead, it could be a reaction to a vaccine, surgery, pregnancy, or trauma.

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