No abstract

Vitiligo is an autoimmune disease characterized by depigmentation of the skin due to destruction of melanocytes. Interferons have been used for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C and some malignancies. We report interferon alpha-2a-induced vitiligo in a male patient with chronic active hepatitis C. All skin lesions disappeared completely without requiring therapy after discontinuation of interferon. This case suggests that vitiligo may be developed during interferon therapy as a side effect.

These findings suggest that HD patients are not protected against Hp infection as the Hp prevalences are as high as that for the non-renal disease group. The increased dyspeptic complaints may be partly related to Hp infection.

Cirrhotic patients with ascites are highly susceptible to spontaneous bacterial peritonitis. Patients with ascites due to causes other than cirrhosis very seldom develop peritonitis. The antibacterial activity of these ascitic fluids is not known. The present study was undertaken to evaluate the bactericidal and opsonic activity in ascitic fluid from patients with and without cirrhosis and in normal (nonascitic) peritoneal fluid. Normal peritoneal fluids of 20 control subjects and ascitic fluids of 22 patients with noncirrhotic ascites all had normal bactericidal activity. The bactericidal activity of ascitic fluid was diminished in all 25 patients with cirrhosis (P less than 0.00005 by Fisher's exact test). Similar results were found when opsonic activity was evaluated. Complement and immunoglobulin concentrations in cirrhotic ascites were significantly lower than those in the other two groups. The present study demonstrates that noncirrhotic ascitic fluid has antibacterial activity similar to normal peritoneal fluid, whereas cirrhotic ascitic fluid has a marked reduction of both bactericidal and opsonic activities. These defects may explain the high incidence of peritonitis in cirrhotic patients.

The authors report their experience with 30 adult patients with Budd-Chiari syndrome (BCS), which is a rare and serious disorder, characterized by hepatic outflow obstruction caused by many different conditions. The diagnosis was based on the clinical data, ultrasonography (US), vena cavography and hepatic venography, computed tomography (CT), and liver biopsy. Behçet's disease (BD) was found in 10 patients with BCS as an underlying disease. Two patients used oral contraceptive drugs, 2 had liver tumor hepatocellular carcinoma and liver lymphoma, and 1 patient had chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Despite full investigation, the authors could not find any obvious underlying cause in the other 15 patients. The results suggest that (1) BCS must be considered as a possible complication in patients with Behçet's disease when they have hepatomegaly even if there were no cardinal manifestations of the disease at the time of admission, and BD is the most common etiologic factor in BCS (33%) in Turkey, where the incidence of Behçet's disease is relatively high. (2) Anti-aggregant treatment seems to be effective in many instances. (3) There were space-occupying lesion-like appearances in the liver of 7 cases by CT and US examination in the acute stage, and these disappeared on the follow-up CT and US in 5 patients but continued in 2. BCS should thus be differentiated from other liver lesions. (4) There were other great-vessel involvements in 43% of the cases, mostly venous, but only 1 pulmonary arterial occlusion.