Japanese clinical guidelines for myasthenia gravis: Putting into practice

Treatment of myasthenia gravis has depended largely on high‐dose corticosteroids for decades. Although this procedure remarkably reduced the mortality rate of myasthenia gravis, it highlighted issues such as the adverse‐effects of steroids and reduction in quality of life. With the recent discovery of novel autoantibodies, a numbers of alternative therapeutic options have become available. The new J apanese clinical guidelines for myasthenia gravis were published in 2014, and they proposed a novel treatment strategy utilizing these therapeutic options, which might replace high‐dose steroids. They also proposed a draft of new diagnostic criteria. The present review introduces the essence of these guidelines and shares the fundamental philosophy of the treatments that value the patients' quality of life.