Introduction: Chronic acquired demyelinating polyneuropathies are a heterogeneous group of autoimmune diseases of peripheral nervous system characterized by muscular weakness and a response to immunomodulatory treatment. Among them, four groups that differ from each other according to the distribution of muscular impairment, sensory failure, and the response to immunomodulatory treatment are distinguished. Human intravenous immunoglobulins are currently most widely used for treatment of all forms. Although they are considered a successful treatment method, the results of various researches performed until then have been evaluated largely with help of different scales, but there is a lack of research that would measure the effect objectively. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to quantitatively measure the effect of intravenous immunoglobulins in patients with chronic demyelinating polyneuropathy. Methods: A sample of ten patients with a form of chronic acquired demyelinating polyneuropathy who regularly received a maintenance dose of intravenous immunoglobulins was captured. With the help of the hand dynamometer MicroFET 2 and the JAMAR® dynamometer, the isometric muscle performance of the upper and lower limbs was measured bilaterally before and within one to two weeks after administration. The results were analysed by Wilcoxon signed-rank test and paired t-tests. For the analysis of the individual, the difference was expressed in percentage. We were interested in how many muscle groups improved for at least 25 % or 50 % in each patient. Results: The second measurement attended eight out of ten patients (age 52,6±14,2), five men and three women. Wilcoxon signed-rank test and paired t-tests suggest the effectiveness of the drug. On our sample, two out of eight responded significantly to treatment with at least half of the measured muscle groups having improved by 50 % or more. In four patients changes were observed in terms of the improvement of certain muscle groups, and in two patients, the results after the second measurement were worse compared to the pre-treatment measurements. Discussion and conclusion: The results show that in the future it is reasonable to monitor patients with objective hand-held dynamometry in addition to different scales. Our research, which sets the foundation for this, proposes test positions and serves as a basis for further interval monitoring of patients. Due to a small sample of subjects and lack of normative value for healthy muscle groups measured with a MicroFET 2 dynamometer, there is a need for further research.
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