Serum antibodies to peripheral nerve tissue in acute Guillain-Barré syndrome in relation to outcome of plasma exchange.

Mixed haemagglutination and complement fixation tests were used to detect serum antibodies to peripheral nerve in 36 patients with acute Guillain-Barré syndrome. Twenty patients were treated with plasma exchange, 16 served as controls. A significant antibody titre was found in 19 patients with the haemagglutination test; 30 had complement-fixing antibodies. Patients lacking complement-fixing antibodies were less disabled at entry (P less than 0.01). However, there was no correlation between the course of the disease and any of the antibodies in the two patient groups. The two tests were therefore not able to select patients for treatment by plasma exchange.