GBS is frequently associated with sporadic or epidemic infectious disorders. The role of preceding infections as a risk factor for GBS has been highlighted recently by emerging viral and bacterial infectious disorders, as major clusters of GBS have been observed recently in Latin America.

We aimed to investigate the association of emerging infectious disorders with Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) in Colombia following the 2015-2016 Zika outbreak.

A prospective case-control study was conducted between June 2016 and December 2019 in 9 university-based hospitals across 5 Colombian cities, included in the Neuroinfections Emerging in the Americas Study (NEAS). Newly diagnosed patients with GBS were matched with healthy household and age and season-matched hospital controls. Clinical information, blood, CSF, and urine samples were used for immunological and molecular assays to establish the presence of recent infection preceding enrollment into the study.  Serum was used to identify anti-gangliosides antibodies. Analyses were performed using conditional logistic regression.

After the ZIKV epidemic, C. jejuni, M. pneumoniae, and Chikungunya virus were the most common preceding infections in GBS in Colombia. The high frequency of C. jejuni, diarrhea, and upper respiratory infections underlies the importance of such risk factors as pathogenic triggers for GBS.