14 Alarming Facts About Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP)

A neurological disease which is capable of destroying a person from the inside out, CIDP is inflammatory, aggressive and scary. A person who experiences the onset of this devastating disease will attest to the fact that it is a daunting prospect, no matter the age of diagnosis.

During the chronic incarnation of the disease, irreparable and catastrophic damage is done to the body’s nerves and the surrounding tissues, leading to a whole host of life-changing complications.

A person’s ability to move can be compromised to the point of altering their gait permanently, even leading to a lack of mobility altogether. The control a person is used to having over the movement of their arms and legs is likely to go. Sensory functionality decreases and disappears and what comes after this is likely to be a lingering feeling of numbness and tingling.

Thankfully, the disease is rare, but here are some of the more alarming facts to do with CIDP.

1.    Average Age of Onset

The average age for the onset of this disease is 50 years old, although the range stretches from as young as 35 to anything up to as long as a person might be expected to live.

With 50 being the new 40, as they say, a person discovering that they are seriously ill can have devastating consequences that may be felt in different parts of their lives. At the age of 50, a person may expect to still have the best part of 2 decades in a working environment ahead of them, and the diagnosis of this disease surely severs that expectation. At 50 many people are embarking on new relationships, such as the prevalence of divorce in the modern world. Some people reaching the age of 50 may well still be relatively new parents, as breakthroughs are constantly being made in the world of fertility.

When all of these things are considered, the relatively low average age of onset can seem a pretty depressing fact to be aware of.