Sjögren's syndrome associated with chronic hepatitis C, severe thrombocytopenia, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and diabetes mellitus.

A 74-year-old woman with Sjögren's syndrome and chronic hepatitis C (CHC) was admitted to our hospital in October 2003 for treatment of diabetes mellitus. She had the past history of recurrent thrombocytopenia, which was proven to be due to peripheral destruction. Although she had been diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) for 2 years, she had never felt palpitation.

Nocardia arthritidis sp. nov., a new pathogen isolated from a patient with rheumatoid arthritis in Japan.

Two different bacterial strains with different drug susceptibilities were isolated from the sputum and an inflammatory discharge from a swelling in the left thigh of a patient with rheumatoid arthritis. Both bacterial strains were provisionally assigned to the genus Nocardia on the basis of their morphological and chemotaxonomic characteristics and were further studied in order to establish their taxonomic status. One strain (IFM 10034) was identified as Nocardia farcinica on the basis of its physiological characteristics.