Latest news
Patient 2000 was inclused on May5th by Dr. Gerardo Gutierrez Gutierrez!
What are the implications of reaching this IGOS-2000 milestone?
- From now on it will not be possible to include new patients in IGOS; the website is now closed for new inclusions.
- It is important to continue the collection of follow-up data and samples from previously included patients. This collection will continue until the last (3 year) follow-up visit of the last included patients (so May 2024). During that window the website will be open for collecting these follow-up data.
- We are about to start a new round of data quality assessments for the first 2000 patients included in IGOS. You will all be approached for this in the coming months.
- We will also plan new transports of materials to Erasmus MC.
More >>During the first virtual PNS Annual Meeting, the IGOS Meeting was also held online for the first time.
We celebrate a succesful meeting but hope the next PNS meeting will be held in person in the beautiful Copenhagen.More >>As a first step to investigate the possible relationship between COVID-19 and GBS, we have lauched a substudy within IGOS. More >> We welcome Linda Luijten to the team, who started her PhD trajectory on May 1st, which will be focused on the application of prognostic models in treatment studies. Linda is also leading the COVID-19 substudy in IGOS.More >> The IGOS Steering Committee and the IGOS Coordinating Center have worked on an addition to the authorship criteria reported in the IGOS Research Policy Agreement. With this additional document we acknowledge all who have contributed substantially to patient data collection and provide transparency on the selection procedure for co-authorship. A link to this document has been sent to all researchers in the IGOS Newsletter dated 18 June 2020.More >> We are excited to announce the acceptance/publication of three IGOS-related papers
- Second IVIg course in Guillain-Barré syndrome with poor prognosis: the non-randomized ISID study, Verboon, et al, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry
- Current treatment practice of Guillain-Barré syndrome, Verboon, et al, Neurology
- Diagnosis and management of Guillain–Barré syndrome in ten steps, Leonhard et al, Nature Reviews Neurology
More >> In 2019 the IGOS Coordination Team in Rotterdam has had many visitors join the team to conduct research projects and celebrate achievements.
Dr. Badrul Islam (icddr,b, Bangladesh) successfully defended his thesis at Erasmus University MC and was awarded his doctorate.
Dr. Amy Davidson (Glasgow University, UK) came to analyse data for a propensity score matching project.
Dr. Yuko Yamagishi (Kindai University, Japan) spent time in Rotterdam to investigate patients in the IGOS cohort with cranial nerve involvement.
More >> We bid farewell to Kim Duong who moved on to another position, but were fortunate to welcome Laura de Koning
to the IGOS Coordination Team in Rotterdam as our new IGOS data manager. Laura has a background in applied mathematics and its use in healthcare. She has hit the ground running, enthusiastically taking on the formation of the IGOS-1500 database, developing the electrophysiology database and assisting with organising and coding our biobank samples to pair with clinical data.More >> We had a very successful Peripheral Nerve Society (PNS) Meeting in June. A total of 8 IGOS-related research projects were presented.More >> Congratulations to Dr. Yuzhong Wang for including the 1800th patient in IGOS! Since Dr. Wang has joined IGOS, he has included many patients in the study, steadily builing on a large IGOS cohort in China. Well done!
More >>Congratulations to Dr. Yuzhong Wang for including the 1700th patient in IGOS!
More >>Changes to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have come into place as of May 2018. These are new regulations to protect personal data, which IGOS must abide by, due to the inclusion of European patients and the storage of our data in The Netherlands (Erasmus MC, Rotterdam).More >> Congratulations to Prof. Yann Pereon for including the 1600th patient in IGOS!
More >>Congratulations to you all, and especially to Dr. Wang from the Affiliated Hospital of Jining in China! We reached inclusion number 1500!
Recruitment is still open, we will inform you of the future of IGOS shortly. Colleagues in the USA, you have already received an update regarding recruitment in the USA.
Thank you all for this tremendous support and we hope to see many of you during the PNS congress in Sitges, Spain.
The IGOS Coordinating Centre
More >>
Patient inclusion
1486 patients we included in IGOS together now, so were are getting close to inclusion 1500. We are happy to notice that after a recruitment period of 5 years already, there is still enthusiasm to inlcude patients!
First research papersThe first publication by our consortium about the protocol of IGOS has been accepted by the
Journal of Peripheral Nervous System! Congratulations to all of you!
More >>Zika Feb/17/2016
There is a lot of turmoil about the possible association between infections with the Zika virus and GBS in Central and South-America. In some countries in that region a raise in GBS cases has been reported since the Zika virus outbreak. At present there are more questions than answers and IGOS tries to help the centers in the endemic areas with their research. Urgent questions that need to be addressed are (1) Do the reported cases have GBS or a mimic of GBS?, (2) Is there an association between recent Zika virus infections and GBS, which can be defined in a proper case-control study, (3) If there is an association, what is the typical clinical phenotype and course of GBS after Zika infection? (4) What is the pathogenesis?, and last ut not least (5) What is treatment and care is provided to these patients? For more updates on Zika and GBS see:
http://www.who.int/en/
http://www.cdc.gov/
More >>Wednesday, 24 June 2015
Dear IGOS collaborators,
With great pleasure we would like to let you know that the patient number 1000 has just been included in IGOS by Prof. Eduardo Nobile-Orazio! We have reached what we have been aiming for since June 2012. This is a major achievement for which we would like to thank you all, and this time Prof. Eduardo Nobile-Orazio in particular.
By no means this means the end of the study. It is still possible to include new patients in IGOS until December 31 of 2015, and of course all included patients will have a follow-up for at least 1 year.
We hope that many of you will attend the PNS congress in Quebec so we can celebrate this together!
Kind regards,
IGOS secretary and coordinating center
Bianca, Christine, Joyce, Marieke and Bart
More >>will we have inclusion 1000 just before the PNS congress.....?
** currently 995 inclusions **
More >>Dear colleagues,
We just included patient number 975; which is the kick-off for the final countdown of IGOS to reach 1000 inclusions, just before the start of the PNS in Quebec! Which investigator will include number 1000.....?
More >>We just added a new form to the download part of our website for investigators. This form gives you instructions as to how to record various types of pain in the same patient.
More >>978
The extended newsletter tab will show you the inclusion rate over time, as well as the inclusions per country.
More >>On July 17th, just after the INC congress in Düsseldorf, IGOS enrolled its 600th patient, by Dr. Kurt Kimpinski from the London Health Sciences Center in London, Canada. Congratulations from us all Dr. Kimpinski!
Current inclusion rate as per today is: 602
More >>We hope to inform you still before the INC in Düsseldorf!
More >>We are approaching inclusion 500....we are almost there. The lucky investigator will receive a special IGOS surpise!
More >>There is a new option to correct the treatment data, if you made a mistake, by setting the data back to a draft version.
More >> December 2013
IGOS reached another mile stone during the holidays. Inclusion number 300 has been recruited by our IGOS investigators in Bangladesh; Zhahir and Badrul Islam. Congratulations to both of them!
Total of inclusions is currently 310!
More >>November 2013
Thanks to our investigators in Bangladesh, who recently joined IGOS, we were able to include patient number 250 in our database. Congratulations to both Badrul Islam and Zhahir Islam from the ICCDRB, in Dhaka! On to inclusion number 500...
More >>October 2013
IGOS is rapidly progressing. The rate of patient inclusions is further increasing and we all have to work hard to keep up with them. A short update on the latest news:
The second countdown to inclusion 200 was won (again) by Dr. Govind Chavada from Glasgow University. Govind congratulations! You have already 25 inclusions on your name.
Strategies to avoid the UK team from setting up a private wine cellar would be highly appreciated; as the winner of each countdown receives a bottle of champagne!
The first patient from Australia was included by dr. James Burrell from Concord Hospital Sydney. We also thank country coordinator Dr. Stephen Reddel for his support to start the study in Australia. From Rotterdam congratulations to both!
The current number of patient inclusions is 233 as per October 24th, 2013.
IGOS is now also accommodating (inter)national transfers of patients. Recently a Dutch patient on holiday was included in IGOS by Dr. Carlos Casasnovas from Bellvigte Hospital in Barcelona Spain. Dr. Casasnovas contacted us in Rotterdam and the patient was repatriated to The Netherlands were our Rotterdam GBS team will continue collecting the follow-up data for IGOS. A second patient was included by Professor Yann Pereon from Nantes University, France. This patient planned to emigrate to Germany but the inclusion in IGOS probably will be continued by dr. Neirich from Frankfurt.
Three more centers in Argentina obtained IRB approval to participate in IGOS. Thank you Dr. Ricardo Reisin and colleagues for all the efforts!
In Rotterdam we welcomed a new member to the IGOS team. Christine Verboon is a resident in Neurology and will start doing a PhD. She will replace Bianca van den Berg, who will continue her clinical training in January 2014. Bianca will come back in early 2015 to join us again.
The IGOS team
Marieke, Bianca, Christine, Joyce and Bart
More >>September 2013
Over the weekend IGOS included patient number 191, which means that the 2nd IGOS countdown has started. Also this time, the clincial researcher who will include patient number 200 will receive a surprise from the Rotterdam IGOS team. We will keep you all posted as to the daily status of inclusion rate on this home page of IGOS.
More >>August 2013
Only a few weeks ago we informed you of the number of inclusions proceeding steadily up to 150. We are very happy to inform you that, despite the holiday period, inclusion number 161 is a fact.
We would like to use this opportunity to welcome Argentina to IGOS, as they recently recruited their first 2 patients!
More >>July 2013
In the extended newsletter you'll find the new graphics with updated numbers of inclusions, number of participating centers and the number of inclusions per country.
More >>IGOS is making progress: 9 months after the start 67 patients have been included. From UK (25), Denmark (16), Netherlands (10), Germany (5), Japan (3), USA (6), Spain (1) and Italy (1). More than 140 centres from 17 countries are participating. The next IGOS meeting will be held at the PNS congress in St. Malo - France.
More >>Since last May there has been a lot of activity within IGOS. There is now a well-established network of centers in the UK, USA, Denmark and the Netherlands. Thus far 7 patients have been recruited and there are at least 13 countries and over 100 international centers participating. For more information: please contact us at
gbsstudies@erasmusmc.nlMore >>Recently we received the good news that the Ethical Committees gave permission to start the IGOS. The first patient can be included at May 1st, 2012. If you are interested to participate please contact gbsstudies@erasmusmc.nl.
More >>From June 24-27, 2012 the INC/PNS congress will be held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. At the congress there will be many presentations about the International studies including IGOS. Click here for information about this congress.
More >>We gratefully acknowledge the GBS-CIDP Foundation International for financially supporting the development of this website for the IGOS.
More >>
