Numbness and pain in right foot and leg after IGG infusions

[clarson]

I have had Gamunex-C infusions for immune deficiency for three years, and recently I developed pain and numbness in my right foot within two hours after an infusion of 35 grams of Gamunex. Within a few hours the numbness and pain had moved up the leg too the knee. It eased up over the next four weeks, but came back after the next infusion. At first my doctor thought it was caused by sitting for four hours while getting the infusion, but after the numbness came back after the next infusion even though I was active during the infusion, he realized there was a problem. This has been ongoing for three months, and standing is quite painful. Last month he changed the infusion from 35 grams every four weeks to 15 grams every two weeks, but this doesn't seem to have helped. However, the two week schedule seems to have eliminated the trough that I went through that fourth week while waiting for the infusion. The drop-off during that fourth week used to be rough, so losing the trough is major.
A Doppler of the feet and legs was negative, a nerve conduction test was negative, a prescription for Neurontin that is used for nerve pain didn't help, and so the doctors seem to think we have a mystery here. No one can imagine how an IGG infusion could be causing my problem, and so I am wondering if anyone out there has had a similar problem. I wonder if this could be an autoimmune problem aggravated by the infusion of antibodies, but I really don't want to go there. Thanks for any help.
Clarson

[s162216]

Hi Clarson,

Sorry I can't think of anything that could cause something like that except perhaps deep vein thrombosis (which has been excluded by the Doppler ultrasound you had), and I've never heard of anybody else experiencing something similar with IVIG!

I don't know if perhaps they might have slightly changed the preservative etc in Gamunex-C recently or something? You could suggest to your doctors about possibly trying a different IVIG product as they are notoriously patient selective (I know a couple of people who've had to try 2 or even 3 before they found one which suited them) and if you don't get the problem with another product then it'll pin down whether its the Gamunex-C or something else.

Hope you manage to find out whats going on as I admit that I've never heard of anyone experiencing something similar!

Sam