Congenital Insensitivity To Pain With Anhidrosis - Clinical Description

Clinical Description

Patients with this disorder are very likely to injure themselves in ways that would normally be prevented by feeling pain. The main features of the disorder are lack of pain sensation, painless injuries of the arms, legs and oral structures, hyperthermia during hot weather because of inability to sweat, syndromic mental retardation as a result of hyperthermia, infection and scarring of the tongue, lips and gums, chronic infections of bones and joints, bone fractures, multiple scars, osteomyelitis and joint deformities, which may lead to amputation. Other common problems are eye related, such as infection due to the sufferers rubbing them too hard, too frequently or scratching them during sleep. In addition, patients typically lack unmyelinated and small myelinated nerve fibers in the dorsal root ganglion. Both are responsible for transmitting pain signals. In addition, patients' sweat glands are normal in both structure and function, though they lack innervations by small diameter neurons.