Risk of psychiatric disorders in Guillain-Barre syndrome: A nationwide, population-based, cohort study

Background Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) is a rare immune-related neurological disorder with high mortality and morbidity, but the comorbid psychiatric disorders garnered little attention in the GBS patients. This study aimed to investigate the association between GBS and the risk of developing psychiatric disorders. Methods A total of 18,192 enrolled patients, with 4548 study subjects who had suffered GBS, and 13,644 controls matched for gender and age, from the Inpatient Dataset of 2000–2013 in Taiwan, and selected from the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD). After adjusting for confounding factors, Cox proportional hazards analysis was used to compare the risk of developing psychiatric disorders during the 13 years of follow-up. Results Of the study subjects, 471 (10.35%) developed psychiatric disorders when compared to 1023 (7.50%) in the control group. Fine and Gray's competing risk model analysis revealed that the study subjects were more likely to develop psychiatric disorders (crude hazard ratio [HR]: 4.281 (95% CI = 3.819–4.798, p < 0.001). After adjusting for gender, age, monthly income, urbanization level, geographic region, and comorbidities, the adjusted HR was 4.320 (95% CI = 3.852–4.842, p < 0.001). Dementia, depressive disorders, sleep disorders, and psychotic disorders predominate in these psychiatric disorders. Mechanical ventilation and hemodialysis are associated with a lower risk of dementia when compared to the control groups. Conclusions Patients who suffered from GBS had a higher risk of developing psychiatric disorders, and this finding should act as a reminder to the clinicians that a regular psychiatric follow-up might well be needed for those patients.