14 Common Symptoms of Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP)

Perhaps the most frustrating thing for people living with CIDP to have to deal with is that for all the periodic improvements they seem to make with regards to their symptoms, these are almost always tempered by relapses.

This neurological disease completely ravages and destroys the nervous system, leaves a person with a decreased range of movement, poorer sensory functions and tingling throughout their extremities.

Whilst the symptoms can be severe, up to 90 percent of people living with CIPD are expected to respond well to immunosuppressive treatments, meaning that the symptoms listed here don’t have to be experienced at their worst for the duration of the condition.

Whilst there will inevitably be peaks and troughs with the illness though, it is expected that many people who suffer from CIDP will ultimately need to use mobility aids, such as wheelchairs and canes.

Some of the more common symptoms of CIDP are listed and expanded upon below.

1.     Clumsiness

Perhaps seeming like a minor symptom on the face of it, an increase in a person’s clumsiness often means an increase in their likelihood of injuring themselves as a result of that clumsiness. For people living on their own, this can be especially problematic. The clumsiness experienced by people with CIDP is often described as feeling like a battle between the body and the mind, as the head knows what it wants to do, whilst the body seems unable to follow instructions.

The neural pathways from the brain are interrupted by the illness, meaning that the body is receiving mixed or delayed messages from the brain and that the senses and sensors are sending mixed and delayed messages back the other way as well. This results in a confusion of movement, and ultimately clumsiness, with everything that brings, such as trips and falls. A person does not simply become more clumsy overnight, without a solid explanation.