Painting and onset of GBS

    • Anonymous
      August 24, 2012 at 9:48 am

      Hi: My husband was diagnosed with GBS in February, he is 51.  He is now receiving IVIG infusions every 3 weeks, still walks with a cane,  some pain still lingers, continues with occupational and physical therapy.  We just found out about somone else who was diagnosed with GBS and in speaking with their family member, they were painting with the new paint and primer all in one paint the day before the onset of GBS symptoms.  My husband was painting with the same paint and primer all in one the day of the onset of GBS.  Has anyone conducted and study to see if there is a corralation between this? Just curious to see if there may be something in the ingredients that may affect certain individuals nervous system.

       My husband’s worse symptoms are his speech.  He still talks as though he had a stroke. We are anxious to see if anyone else has/had these symptoms and if and when their speech was back to normal.

      Thanks!

    • GH
      August 24, 2012 at 4:13 pm

      It is unlikely that paint had anything at all to do with your husband’s condition. GBS is triggered by a stimulus to the immune system, generally aan infection, but there are underlying causes as well which are not fully understood. Many cases of GBS are ideopathic, because an infection need not have a clinical presentation in order to trigger GBS.

      It is easy to jump to a conclusion that whatever he was doing at the time of the onset of the illness may have been the cause, but this is not valid reasoning. Better to focus on recovery, in my opinion.

    • August 24, 2012 at 5:32 pm

      Hi, The only thing I can think of regarding a connection is if there was a high content of lead or some other chemical in the paint.  But then it would not be gbs/cidp, it would be because of heavy metal overload and the neurological system was responding to the metals.  Not saying it isn’t possible to have a connection between the paint and cidp.  Is your husband allergic to any chemicals?  For instance a reaction to a particular chemical (allergic) could cause the immune system to turn on to fight off a reaction and then not stop fighting.  That is essentially an easy way of explaining how gbs/cidp could start.  There is a trigger, virus, bacteria, aneasthesia, even stress, amoung many other possible triggers that starts the immune system to respond to the particular trigger and then not turn off.  Are you near these people that had the issue with the paint?  I do think it is worth it to keep doing google searches to see if anyone else has had such a response to the paint, you never know.

      About your comment that your husband is now getting regular gbs, have they switched the dx to cidp instead of gbs?  Typically with gbs there is only an initial dosing of ivig, then maybe plasma pheresis, but not continual ivig treatments.  Continual would be indicative of cidp.  Good luck, keep us posted.