Cerebral Salt-Wasting Associated With the Guillain-Barré Syndrome

INAPPROPRIATE secretion of antidiuretic hormone has been implicated as the cause of the hyponatremia and renal salt-wasting associated with certain cases of intracranial and intrathoracic disease. Cases of traumatic, infectious, and neoplastic intracranial disease, and of neoplastic thoracic disease have been associated with the salt-wasting syndrome. 1-6 The following is a report of the simultaneous occurrence in a patient of an illness clinically indistinguishable from the Guillain-Barre syndrome and of an electrolyte disturbance marked by transient loss of renal sodium-conserving ability, plasma hypo-osmolality, and plasma hyponatremia. Immunologic features of this patient's illness suggested to us that the etiology of the polyradiculoneuropathy was hypersensitivity to viral antigens. Report of a Case A 32-year-old Taiwanese man, a virology technician at the US Naval Medical Research Unit No. 2 (NAMRU-2), was admitted to Taiwan University Hospital on Sept 16, 1961, with the chief complaint of walking disturbance and pain in the left