arthritis after gbs???

hi & welcome,

gbs, cidp, &, rheumatoid arthritis [ra] all have somewhat similar symptoms & this area is not easy to Dx. does he think you have more than 1 of these or is he considering changing his Dx to ra? take care. be well.

gene gbs 8-99
in numbers there is strength

Billy Bob, 😀

Nerve conduction normal, why is there pain?? Is that why he said RA? I definitely need more details of the visit in an email.

Hi William,

It’s also very common for a doctor, when not much else to do but treat symptons, to second guess, or put other issues in the mix that might relate. Try and look like they are really thinking of just what you have, by looking at something else. Get a better result on the symptons. Usually comes up after 2 years. They don’t know how to attack GBS/CIDP, but they do know how to attack arthritus, and I see that one crop up all the time, along with carprul tunnel syndrome. Nerve pain, or arthritus pain? That’s the only question to answer by going down that road. I understand X-ray’s will show calcium buildups or something, with most types of arthritus, so that seems to be the next logical step. You say your doc said ‘maybe’, so I assume pain is what you are trying to get a hold on. Past medical history, family history, if even known, age and so on, play into it also. All you can do is test.

hi william, glad to hear from you again man! hope things are better with your health, since the last time i heard from you. have you had any blood work done? there are some numbers in those tests that can give your dr a hint if you have ra. i have oa in my knnes, seen while being scoped-but did not show up in blood work. it is just like other health issues, sometimes you get false results or not in the “box” results. ra typically attacks both rightside and leftside at the same place-knuckles on each hand, and so on. not just oneside, or one place on the leftside and another place on the rightside. glad you made it back, hope you are feeling better! take care.:)

Hey all. I too have had authritic like pains in wrists, elbows, knees, ankles. The specialists said that this might be a cross problem to neuropathy. Comment?
Hugs and take care
Val

My legs are very stiff in the mornings when I first get up (especially below my knees) and also after sitting a long time such as when driving but I thought it was from nerve damage from GBS and not arthritis. I never had arthritis before I got GBS. My fingers get real stiff at times but again I always thought it to be from GBS.

Hi William-

many GBSers never get their reflexes back. My friend who had GBS at 18 is now almost 40, reflexes never came back. Mine returned in legs, but not elbows. Also, many rheumatoid diseases can cause a GBS episode. In fact I had a complete workup by a rhumatologist in the hospital to rule all that out, including lupus erythromatosus, RA, and others. They did extensive blood workup.

William,

I was diagnosed with mild RA after CIDP, just another Autoimmune Disease to add to my list. I hope that you get results from treatment. Take it easy.

Jerimy

Has your doctor done an [B]RA factor blood test yet?[/B] He should so you can have a correct answer.

I am post GBS since 2000. I had arthritis before then, but it has gotten worse since then. Not just the normal getting old arthritis, but sudden.

I had a little arthritis in my left middle finger, and it would bother me but nothing too bad. One morning about a year ago, I woke up and both my hands were like frozen. I had to keep stretching them and squeezing the fingers back and forth to get them to work. It was like arthritis blew up into my hands.( it was so painful I didn’t know what to do first, cry or scream) Ever since then I have been having a real lot of problems. I went to a rhumethogist and he just prescribed a time release anti-inflammitory. (Indomethocin).

I have had other major hits of arthritis, but getting old does have something to do with some of it. But I feel GBS had a hand in some of it too.

I have pain in both hands in all the joints as well as in the wrists and my doc, whom I saw today, thinks it is RA. The problem is that neither x rays nor blood tests can rule it out, since you can be negative with both and still have it. It is the pain and where it occurs that is the largest determining factor. She also said it could be from GBS-they just don’t know. In any case I will get my bloodwork back and then see. If the symptoms are not gone in two weeks with ibuproben I am off to a rheumotologist and see what they have to say. I think GBS is the gift that just keeps on giving. Jeff

William there is no real relationship between arthritis and GBS. As Racer says, many are initially misdiagnosed as ‘arthritis’. Rheumatoid and osteo-arthritis are very different disesases and don’t primarily affect the peripheral nervous system.

Rheumatoid typically affects the small joints, hands, feet and wrists. osteo the big ones like knees hips and shoulders. Rheumatoid usually has a positive rheumatoid factor blood test and a raised ESR erythrocyte sedimentation rate, X-ray findings are typical of each type of arthritis.

GBS shows absent or reduced tendon reflexes and abnormal electrical conduction studies, the neuropathic pain can be excruciating and may lead to a mis-diagnosis. There is also muscle weakness and sensory loss. DocDavid

I was diagnosed with osteo-arthritis after my first GBS attack. The cause, as I was told could be from a number of factors, such as the tortue on my body lifting people for 13 yrs in the nursing home, laying imobile for almost 3 months, nerves not working correctly which reduces the amount of muscles being used which causes damage on the joints. Any one or combination could be the culprit.

I know the diagnosis is correct. First x-rays and MRI confirm and as soon as I started Celebrex the pain was reduced.

Good luck in finding the “right” answer!

Angela

I think most of us know the difference between GBS and arthritis, in terms of how it feels. It is also clear that the mechanism is different in each, but that is not to rule out some correlation between RA and GBS. How do we know paralysis does not affect the joints? Also, since both are autoimmune diseases it seems to me that some people might have a greater disposition to such diseases and in fact there might be some underlying connection, since in both diseases the body attacks itself. DocDavid is right in differentiating the two, but in a wholistic sense it seems to me that the diseases one gets are related, especially if we don’t just think in the strict medical model which usually is not wholistic. Jeff

Well, in rereading the posts I am not sure most people know the difference between the symptoms of the two diseases. For me the only cross-over is fatigue. My pain is in my joints now and I never had joint pain before or with GBS which was a horrible pain all through my legs and hands. I don’t think doctors would dx arthritis if a person presented with typical GBS symptoms or vice versa. Unfortunately it is not always easy to dx RA especially in the early stages when blood tests do not always reveal any abnormalities. The main question I think is the location and nature of the pain. Jeff