Incidence of Guillain-Barre syndrome in Sweden 1996

We describe the incidence of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) in Sweden in 199 6. Information of incident GBS patients was mainly collected by a multicent re network of 18 neurologists prospectively monitoring a general population with 4.48 million inhabitants across the country and complemented with dat a from the national hospital in-patient registry. GBS diagnoses for all pat ients were validated by neurologists. While 53 patients with GBS were ident ified by the network neurologists from the study population, the other 20 G BS patients were recognized after carefully reviewing the registered data. There were 44 (60%) male patients and 29 (40%) female patients and the mean age at onset for all patients was 48.6 (SD 24.3) years. The GBS incidence, age-adjusted to the European standard population, was 1.51 (95% CI 1.18-1. 90) per 100 000 person-years in 1996, higher in males and increased with ag e. When compared with selected studies, the GBS incidence in Sweden is mode rately high, and the variation of GBS incidence in Europe seems to be small .