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We present the case of a 70-year-old woman with a history of seronegative arthritis, recurrent pleural effusion and weight loss. A prior lung biopsy had revealed non-caseating epithelioid cell granulomas without evidence for microbial organisms on special stains. Intestinal biopsy findings where suspicious for Whipple’s disease, which was confirmed by PCR testing, both on the intestinal and retrospectively on the lung tissue. Treatment with ceftriaxone resulted in clinical deterioration with fever, arthritis and recurrent pleuritis consistent with immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome. Dose increase of glucocorticoids and therapy rotation to doxycycline and hydroxychloroquine resulted in rapid clinical improvement.

In a patient with a history of bariatric surgery, severe copper deficiency presenting with macrocytic hyperregenerative anaemia was diagnosed. Besides the impaired intestinal absorption due to a short bowel syndrome, the enteral zinc supplementation competitively decreased the intestinal copper uptake. Once the zinc supplementation was stopped, enteral copper replacement ensued and normalised haemoglobin levels with decreasing median corpuscular volume were observed during follow-up visits.