Mumbai hospital relief to UP cop suffering from baffling new auto-immune condition – Times of India

MUMBAI: When UP police inspector Girish Upadhyay (58) first came to Mumbai in October 2022, he was so weak that he needed two people to prop him up and his neck was constantly in a drooping position.

He had met several doctors across cities for two years for a diagnosis, but the illness remained a mystery. While most doctors said it was Parkinson’s Disease, some felt it was Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, both neurodegenerative diseases in which nerve cells stop working.
Last October, as his weight fell to 57kg from 97, Lucknow doctors sent him to Tata MemorialHospital, where doctors ruled out cancer and referred him to KEM Hospital’s neurology department. In a few days, his ailment was diagnosed as a relatively new auto-immune condition called anti-IgLON5.
UP cop began walking after being put on steroids & monoclonal antibodies
Uttar Pradesh cop Girish Upadhyay, who has been diagnosed as having a relatively new auto-immune disorder called anti-IgLON5, would develop a new symptom every few months; what began as a double vision went on to affect his voice and t, and soon affected his neck’s muscles.
“The patient had undergone so many tests that we had a lot to start with. It was a matter of shifting the focus from neurodegenerative diseases to autoimmune conditions,’’ neurologist Dr Santosh Srinivas, Upadhyay’s treating physician, said. He added that the anti-IgLON5 is actually at the cusp of both neuro and autoimmune conditions.
Autoimmune conditions occur when the body’s immune system, which defends against disease and infection, starts malfunctioning and attacks healthy cells, tissues and organs. Not only are the causes unknown, only about 80 autoimmune diseases, including diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, have been classified so far. Anti-IgLON5 is among the latest entities, with about 70 casesknown globally since 2014.
Soon after Upadhyay got admitted to KEM Hospital on October 6, 2022, doctors senthis samples to a laboratory in Kochi to check for antibodies to Anti-IgLON5. He was then put on steroids and monoclo-nal antibodies, and improved enough to walk out on his own on November 11, 2022.
“At every other hospital, only one neurologist would meet me. But it was reassuring that in KEM Hospital a team of doctors would come by,’’ he told TOI. Neurology head Dr Neeraj Jain said, “With any long-standing illness, it is important to first rule out treatable causes. ’’ KEM Hospital dean Dr Sangeeta Rawat said it’s important to suspect autoimmune conditions and carry out tests. “More so, in this day and age when tests are available at affordable rates within India instead of sending them abroad,’’ she said.
Dr Ramshekhar Menon from Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum, said some Anti-IgLON5 patients treated in his department were completely back to normal. “But we cannot stop treatment as we still don’t know a lot about it, especially a relapse,” he said. Updhayay, who was in Mumbai for a followup recently, said he still gets tired and his neck droops for a few minutes on some days. “But I am far better than I was 18 months back,” he said.