ABSTRACT
Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) infusion is being used increasingly to treat a range of neuromuscular disorders that are believed to be autoimmune in origin, as other chapters in this text document. How immunoglobulin exerts its beneficial effects, however, remains uncertain (1). The primary pathological process in most of these disorders involves humoral factors, likely to be autoantibodies. Evidence for this at the clinical level is the short-tenn improvement observed in these patients following plasma exchange [as, e.g., in myasthenia gravis (2)] and the sustained response that immunosuppressive drugs can engender.
