Managing non-paraneoplastic Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome: clinical characteristics in 25 German patients.

In about 40% of patients LEMS is not a paraneoplastic phenomenon (NT-LEMS). Several clinical aspects important to these patients remain open, especially the question when a LEMS can definitely be diagnosed as NT-LEMS. Here we describe a series of 25 German NT-LEMS patients regarding their clinical characteristics, duration of symptoms, value of serological markers, paraneoplastic antibodies and FDG-PET/CT.

Lambert-eaton myasthenic syndrome differential reactivity of tumor versus non-tumor patients to subunits of the voltage-gated calcium channel.

Objective: Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS) is an autoimmune disease in which the transmission across the neuromuscular junction is disturbed by autoantibodies directed against the presynaptic P/Q-type voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCC). LEMS is paraneoplastic (T-LEMS) in about 60% of patients mostly associated with a small cellular lung carcinoma (SCLC), but occurs spontaneously without a tumor in 40% (NT-LEMS). In most cases neurologic symptoms appear before tumor diagnosis, but there is as yet no clear specific serologic marker to distinguish between NT- and T-LEMS.