Mycophenolate mofetil for maintenance therapy of Wegener's granulomatosis and microscopic polyangiitis: a pilot study in 11 patients with renal involvement.

Successful maintenance therapy with mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) 2 g/d and low-dose oral corticosteroids (OCS) over a period of 15 mo was given to patients with Wegener's granulomatosis (WG) (n = 9) and microscopic polyangiitis (MPA) (n = 2). All patients had severe generalized disease with pauci-immune necrotizing glomerulonephritis and received standard induction therapy with oral cyclophosphamide and OCS for a mean of 14 wk until remission was achieved. Of 11 patients, only one WG patient relapsed in the 14th month of maintenance therapy.

Clinical course and symptomatic prediagnostic period of patients with Wegener's granulomatosis and microscopic polyangiitis.

The clinical course of 15 patients with Wegener's granulomatosis (WG) and eight patients with microscopic polyangiitis (MPA) from one nephrological clinical center is presented for the period from 1984 to 1993, when testing for antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA) was gradually introduced into routine clinical practice. We found a high degree of prolonged time periods with symptoms attributable to WG or MPA until the specific diagnosis was made. Nine patients with WG and one patient with MPA had symptomatic prediagnostic periods of more than three years, which extended in one case up to twenty years.

[Brucellosis with fatal endotoxic shock].

Background: Brucellosis is a zoonosis with good prognosis in cases of early diagnosis. To make the diagnosis is still a problem today.

Case Report: A 60-year-old butcher was admitted with undulating fever, sweats, arthralgia and weight loss.

Experience with zinc protoporphyrin as a marker of endogenous iron availability in chronic haemodialysis patients.

Background: Ferritin and the percentage of transferrin saturation (TS) are established parameters with which to evaluate endogenous iron availability during treatment of renal anaemia with recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEpo). Zinc protoporphyrin (ZPP) has been proposed as another valid marker in this setting.

Methods: We determined the following parameters in 127 patients, including 117 haemodialysis patients: haemoglobin, erythrocytes, haematocrit, mean corpuscular volume (MCV), iron, ferritin, transferrin saturation and ZPP.

Primary bilateral renal centrocytic non-Hodgkin's lymphoma as a cause of renal failure.

We present a patient whose cause of renal failure was primary and isolated bilateral renal manifestation of centrocytic non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The treatment options for bilateral primary renal lymphoma are discussed against the background of published data concerning this topic.