A case of hepatic and bone marrow sarcoidosis with progressive renal failure: diagnostic and therapeutic challenges.

Sarcoidosis is a systemic granulomatous disease, sometimes characterized by an extrapulmonary localization in 30 - 50% of cases. We describe a 60-year-old Italian man with an unexplained history of fatigue, ascitis and progressive renal function impairment. Diagnosis of hepatic and bone marrow sarcoidosis was established by histology, and fast improvement of renal function was obtained after starting  corticosteroid therapy.

[Use of PCR for TB bacteria on BAL in early diagnosis of tubercular lobitis].

In June 2008 a 23-year-old immunocompetent came to our observation, without fever and with an occasional cough for 2 months, who showed two chest X-rays and a CT, performed respectively 60, 40 and 20 days earlier, that pointed to a small lobitis at the right lung base. The patient had already undergone several antibiotic therapies that had not changed the X-graphic framework. On presentation, routine blood tests and cultural examinations of sputum were carried out to detect common germs, fungi and TB bacteria (microscopic observation, cultivation and PCR), and a new antibiotic therapy (piperacillin/tazobactam) was started.

[Sexual exposure to HIV, sexual behaviour and use of pharmacological post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP)].

In this study we examined the characteristics of 60 subjects (49 M and 11 F, average age 32.3) out of 195 post-exposure pharmacological prophylaxis (PEP) to HIV, taken in our hospital from 2001 to 2008. The above-mentioned subjects are sexually exposed (or presumably exposed) to HIV.