Relapsing Febrile Nonsuppurative Panniculitis

Weber-Christian panniculitis and auto-immune disease: a case report.

“…An immune mechanism may initiate or perpetuate the adipose damage. It has been described in association with tuberculosis (Tilden et al, 1940;Beerman, 1953;Macdonald and Feiwel, 1968), glomerulonephritis (Spain and Foley, 1944), myositis (Kiernan and Burger, 1960), intrahepatic sclerosing cholangitis, vasculitis, and positive LE cells (Hellstrom and Perez-Stable, 1966), leucopenia (Friedman, 1945), leucopenia and leucagglutinins (Rosenstock, 1968), pancytopenia (Wyatt 1969), hypersplenism, megaloblastosis, and pancytopenia (Mitsutani et al, 1973), and following withdrawal of steroids given in treatment of rheumatic fever (Smith and Good, 1956). A histologically similar condition (lupus erythematosus profundus) has also been described in association with systemic lupus erythematosus (Macoul, 1967), and Tuffanelli (1971) has demonstrated IgG antivascular antibody, IgM, and complement at the dermal epidermal junction in this condition.…”

Weber-Christian Disease with Visceral Involvement

“…Christian's original patient had a remission of three years' duration, and one patient was free of the disease 20 years after the initial diagnosis-see discussion at the end of the paper by Miller and Kritzler (1943). In the case of Tilden et al (1940), the patient died from miliary tuberculosis. Miller and Kritzler (1943) described the first necropsy to be made in the active stage of panniculitis, and their patient died of general debility with signs of liver insufficiency, and at necropsy acute focal necrosis of the liver and spleen with moderate fatty degeneration of the liver was found.…”