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Clinical features of patients with myasthenia gravis associated with autoimmune diseases
Author(s) -
Kanazawa M.,
Shimohata T.,
Tanaka K.,
Nishizawa M.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
european journal of neurology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.881
H-Index - 124
eISSN - 1468-1331
pISSN - 1351-5101
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-1331.2007.01978.x
Subject(s) - medicine , myasthenia gravis , autoimmune disease , incidence (geometry) , graves' disease , disease , autoimmune thyroiditis , gastroenterology , thyroiditis , immunology , physics , optics
We investigated the incidence and clinical features of patients with myasthenia gravis (MG) associated with autoimmune diseases. Associated autoimmune diseases were found in 28 of 142 consecutive Japanese MG patients (19.7%), amongst which Graves’ disease (7.7%) and Hashimoto's thyroiditis (4.2%) were predominant. The clinical features of MG patients with Graves’ disease were different from those of MG patients without autoimmune diseases in terms of age at onset of MG symptoms (35.5 ± 4.0 years and 49.0 ± 1.7 years; P < 0.05), positivity for the anti‐acetylcholine receptor antibody (44.4% and 89.8%; P < 0.05), and association with thymic hyperplasia (72.7 and 17.9%; P < 0.05). The therapeutic outcome of MG patients with Graves’ disease and that of those without autoimmune diseases were not significantly different. Further studies should be performed to investigate whether MG associated with Graves’ disease is a distinct subtype of MG.