Relapsing sensory ataxia initially manifested by miller-fisher syndrome

ABSTRACT

We experienced a patient who manifested Miller-Fisher syndrome initially, and progressed relapsing ataxia later, There was electrophysiologic evidence of distal sensory polyneuropathy with completely sparig of somatic motor nerves. Sural nerve biopsy showed severe segmental demyelination. All the symptoms improved by intravenous immunoglobulin dramatically but after a period of remission, progressive ataxia reappeared. Plama exchange had some effect and prednisolone alone showed no definite improvement. High dose of prednisolone combined with IVIgG made remission for a long time. We believe that this patient had an unusual form of inflammatory polyneuropathy, a relapsing variant of the Miller-Fisher syndrome of acute idiopathic polyneuritis. In this case, IVIgG was the most effective therapy and prednisolone was added as a long term therapy successfully.