Science News: A Study on the Epidemiology of COVID-19 Related Guillain-Barré Syndrome in the United States

Published January 30, 2025

Science News

Submitted by: Oksana Sayko, MD
Edited by:
Nakul Katyal, MD

Citation: Sharma A, Sharma A, Soubani AO. A study on the epidemiology of COVID-19-related Guillain-Barré syndrome in the United States. J Clin Neuromuscul Dis. 2024;25(4):178-183. doi:10.1097/CND.0000000000000480

Summary: Several neurological complications have been reported with COVID-19, including Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS). Researchers looked at incidence, baseline characteristics, and in-hospital outcomes of COVID 19–associated GBS in the United States.

A retrospective analysis was conducted using the USA National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database to identify hospitalizations for COVID-19 and GBS, using International Classification of Disease. The study examined factors associated with GBS using the April–December 2020 NIS database. The NIS is a publicly available all-payer database of USA inpatient hospitalizations, providing nationally representative estimates.

     
Descriptive analysis was performed to report baseline variables, including demographic characteristics, hospital characteristics, comorbidities (asthma, diabetes mellitus, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and obesity), and complications (acute respiratory failure, acute kidney injury, myocardial infarction, venous thromboembolism, disseminated intravascular coagulation, and septic shock). The study also investigated the utilization of noninvasive ventilation, invasive mechanical ventilation, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.

Results: In total, 13,705 GBS admissions were recorded nationwide in 2020; of these, 1155 (8.43%) were associated with COVID-19. The frequency of GBS in COVID-19 admissions was 0.07%, compared with 0.08% in non–COVID-19 admissions (P = 0.8166). COVID-19 cohort with GBS had higher utilization of invasive mechanical ventilation (20.8% vs. 11.8%, P <0.001) in comparison with COVID-19 cohort without GBS. GBS admissions with COVID-19 exhibited significantly higher inpatient mortality (12.2% vs. 3%, P <0.001) compared with GBS admissions without COVID-19.
 

The study findings underscore GBS as a rare yet severe complication of COVID-19, highlighting a significant difference in mortality when compared with GBS not associated with COVID-19. 

Comments: Interesting comprehensive study on COVID-19 related GBS. This study provides the first comprehensive analysis of GBS associated with COVID-19 using a large US inpatient