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A 15-Year Nationwide Epidemiological Analysis of Guillain-Barré Syndrome in Taiwan

Background: Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is a potentially life-threatening disease that typically occurs after a preceding infectious disease. An accurate estimation of GBS incidence would be useful for investigating the potential causal relationships between risk factors and GBS. Here we described the nationwide incidence of GBS in Taiwan. Methods: The cases of GBS were obtained from all admission records of the National Health Insurance Research Database. We identified all of the first-admitted GBS patients by a code of ICD-9-CM 357.0 presented at the discharge diagnoses in admission records between 1997 and 2011. Calendar year, age, and sex-specific incidence, and seasonal variation were estimated. Results: A total of 5,998 patients were identified. The male-to-female rate ratio was 1.54. The crude incidence rate was 1.65 per 100,000 person-years. The incidence of GBS was lowest in people aged less than 20 and increased with age, especially in people older than 50 years. In spring, the incidence was 10% higher than in other seasons. Conclusions: The overall incidence is in line with previous large-scale studies. A significant higher rate in spring is also shown. The potential reasons for the seasonality and higher incidence among older patients should be further investigated.