Search

During the last decade, antiphospholipid antibodies and their clinical manifestations have given rise to increasing interest and have been associated with a wide spectrum of clinic expression, including arterial and venous thrombosis, thrombocytopenia, recurrent fetal wastage, Coombs positive haemolysis, livedo reticularis and neurological abnormalities, commonly present as isolated recurrent events, and rarely characterized by fatal outcome. Recently, an acutely disseminated vasculopathy, the so-called "catastrophic antiphospholipid syndrome" (CAS) characterized by non-inflammatory vascular occlusion and frequency of fatal outcome, has been described. We present yet another case report of this new and poorly understood entity and review its antecedents, clinical manifestations, serological profile, treatment and outcome.

Since rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and psoriatic arthritis (PA) are common diseases, there should be a group of patients in which the two entities coexist, with an estimated prevalence ranging from 0.03/10,000 to 0.15/10,000. The two entities may share clinical, analytic and radiologic features that further complicate the diagnosis. We report here a patient in whom RA and PA coexisted. The features that differentiate peripheral arthritis in RA and PA are discussed.

The case of a 45 year old man with cutaneous polyarteritis nodosa and Raynaud's phenomenon as initial manifestation of the disease is reported. Although peripheral vascular disease is a well characterised extracutaneous manifestation of cutaneous polyarteritis nodosa, to our knowledge this is the first reported case in which Raynaud's phenomenon was the initial and sole manifestation of the disease for a long time.