piperidines and Paraproteinemias

The acquired chronic demyelinating neuropathies include a growing number of disease entities that have characteristic, often overlapping, clinical presentations, mediated by distinct immune mechanisms, and responding to different therapies. After the discovery in the early 1980s, that the myelin associated glycoprotein (MAG) is a target antigen in an autoimmune demyelinating neuropathy, assays to measure the presence of anti-MAG antibodies were used as the basis to diagnose the anti-MAG neuropathy. The route was open for describing the clinical characteristics of this new entity as a chronic distal large fiber sensorimotor neuropathy, for studying its pathogenesis and devising specific treatment strategies. The initial use of chemotherapeutic agents was replaced by the introduction in the late 1990s of rituximab, a monoclonal antibody against CD20

Topics: Adenine; Animals; Autoantibodies; Autoantigens; B-Lymphocyte Subsets; CD57 Antigens; Demyelinating Autoimmune Diseases, CNS; Epitopes; Gait Disorders, Neurologic; Humans; Immunosuppressive Agents; Immunotherapy; Lenalidomide; Mammals; Mice; Molecular Mimicry; Myelin Sheath; Myelin-Associated Glycoprotein; Nerve Fibers, Myelinated; Nervous System Autoimmune Disease, Experimental; Paraproteinemias; Paraproteins; Piperidines; Plasma Exchange; Polyradiculoneuropathy; Ranvier's Nodes; Rats; Rituximab