| Popis: |
Hypocomplementemic urticarial vasculitis syndrome (HUVS) is a rare immune-complex small vessel systemic vasculitis involving kidney in about 50% of patients. Characteristic clinical features are recurrent urticaria, decreased serum complement, skin vasculitis, arthritis, eye inflammation, abdominal pain, glomerulonephritis and positive anti-C1q antibodies. We report a 36-year-old woman with a 12-year history of recurrent urticaria and 2 years of urticarial vasculitis. On admission, she also had arthritis, pleuritis and pericarditis, abdominal pain, pathologic urinalysis, low serum values of C3, C4 and CH50. All immunoserology was negative except for ANA 1:80 and anti-C1q 620 IU. ’Full-house’ immune complex vasculitis was demonstrated in skin and lung biopsies. A kidney biopsy showed diffuse proliferative segmental active and sclerosing glomerulonephritis with mesangial and endocapillary proliferation, neutrophil exudation, necrosis, extracapillary crescents and segmental and global glomerulosclerosis. ’Full-house’ glomerular and extensive extraglomerular vascular and tubulointerstitial immune deposits with dominant IgG, C3 and C1q were noted by immunofluorescence. Electron microscopy revealed electron dense deposits with an ultrastructural ’fingerprint’ pattern in the glomerular mesangium, transmembranous in capillary walls and in the arteriolar wall. Our patient fulfilled the criteria for HUVS and SLE, in accordance with the not infrequent clinical and immunoserological overlapping of the two diseases. |
Full Text from ScienceDirect