Of ten patients with Takayasu's disease (TD), all women, hospitalized in our Service in the last 5 years, seven were more than 38 years old. In these subjects the mean age at diagnosis was 41.2 years. These findings confirm that, in Italy as in other Western countries, including the United States, the diagnosis of TD is usually made later than in Asia and Latin America. This circumstance is probably related to actual later onset of the disease. In most of our cases both the anamnestic data and the angiographic findings demonstrated an evolution of the disease with further involvement of other arteries. Several arterial biopsies consistently showed, within a diffuse sclerosis, more or less extensive inflammatory aggregates characterized by a lymphoplasmacellular infiltration often associated with giant cells. Such a pattern testifies to the persistence of an active arteritis even a long time after the onset of the disease - "persistent active arteritis" instead of "residual arteritis." Pointing out such an evolution of the TD in every stage, our clinicopathologic study emphasizes the importance of a careful followup of the patients; it also advises continuous treatment with corticosteroid drugs, sometimes associated with immunosuppressors, to attain a reduction of the inflammatory process.
After three months of corticosteroid treatment, a sixty-nine-year-old man, suffering from temporal arteritis, developed a Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) initially located on the left ankle and subsequently spread over both feet and hands. Laboratory data showed a deficiency of both humoral and cellular immunity and constant positivity in the tests for cytomegalovirus. The onset of KS during corticosteroid treatment of temporal arteritis is an extremely rare occurrence, this case being only the second one reported in the literature. In our case the development of this neoplasm can be related to an immunodeficiency that led to a deficit in the immunological surveillance, along with an activation of oncogenic viruses.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.