Ulcerative colitis followed by the development of Behçet's disease.

A 34-year-old man who had a history of ulcerative colitis (UC) was admitted to our hospital with complaints of arthralgia, erythema nodosum, recurrent oral aphthous ulcers and bloody stools. A colonoscopy revealed multiple aphthous ulcers on his cecum and colon and also revealed a transmural ulcer on his rectum consistent with a diagnosis of UC. The patient was HLA-B51 positive.

[Etoposide ameliorated refractory hemophagocytic syndrome in a patient with systemic sclerosis].

We successfully treated a 33-year-old woman with etoposide who developed systemic sclerosis (SSc)-associated refractory hemophagocytic syndrome (HPS). She had been diagnosed as SSc because she had had Raynaud's phenomenon, proximal scleroderma, telangiectasia, microstomia, thickening and shortening of lingual frenulum and positive antinuclear antibody since 1994. In September 1999, she showed high fever, anemia, thrombocytopenia, elevation of serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and ferritin levels and hemophagocytosis in her bone marrow, which led to the diagnosis of HPS.