Neuritis

Neuritis
Neuritis, inflammation of one or more nerves. Neuritis can be caused by injury, infection,
or autoimmune disease. The characteristic symptoms include pain and tenderness,
impaired sensation, often with numbness or hypersensitivity, impaired strength and
reflexes, and abnormal circulation and decreased the ability to sweat in the distribution of the
named nerve or nerves. Although the term neuritis is sometimes used interchangeably
with neuropathy, the latter is an often painful condition that is associated generally with
nerve damage, dysfunction, or degeneration rather than with inflammation alone. In
some instances neuritis can progress to neuropathy. One of the more common forms of
the condition is optic neuritis.
Neuritis can affect one nerve (mononeuritis) or a plexus of nerves (plexitis). When several
single nerves are affected simultaneously, the condition may be referred to as
mononeuritis multiplex. When widely separated nerves are affected, it is known as
polyneuritis. The symptoms of neuritis are usually conned to a specic portion of the
body served by the inamed nerve or nerves.
Inammations of sensory neurons in a nerve bre cause sensations of tingling, burning, or
stabbing pains that usually are worse at night and are aggravated by touch or
temperature change. The inammation of motor neurons causes symptoms ranging from
muscle weakness to complete paralysis. Muscles in the area served by the affected nerve
lose tone, become tender, and may atrophy. Bell palsy, which causes a characteristic
distortion of the muscles on one side of the face, is a form of mononeuritis and is caused
by the inflammation of a facial nerve (the condition is sometimes also described as a form
of mononeuropathy).
Treatment is directed toward the cause of the neuritis; analgesics may be prescribed for
pain relief. Recovery is usually rapid in less-severe cases.