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There is a strong potential in the use of body fluid biomarkers for different clinical purposes in neurological diseases. Such biomarkers can aid in diagnosis, prognosis, patient stratification and treatment effect monitoring. This value of biomarkers is exemplified by current use in diagnosis and follow-up of patients. This does for example include the analysis of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in Alzheimer´s disease for tau protein and abeta-peptides, the search for aquaporin autoantibodies in neuromyelitis optica. Rapid technological developments offer opportunities to develop novel and specific body fluid biomarkers, even in blood. This is shown by the use of blood neurofilament light chain in a variety of neurological diseases.

The established treatment options for CIDP are quite limited, to short term suppressive Ig based therapies (IVIG, SCIG, PLEX) and corticosteroids with their problematic long term side effects. The reasons behind this include disease rarity, heterogeneity, and that it is rarely life-threatening, all of which have contributed to the lack of an evidence base for other longer term and potentially more effective immunotherapies. Nonetheless other treatments often have to be tried in individual CIDP patients, without the trial evidence base. A knowledge base exists in other neurological diseases, including MG, MS and the MOG antibody and NMO variants. This gives some insights into which treatments should be considered and for which subgroups of CIDP, for how long an N=1 treatment trial should continue, and the comparative risks arising.