Elephantiasis Associated with Tertiary Syphilis

Obesity-Associated Abdominal Elephantiasis

Abdominal elephantiasis is a rare entity. Abdominal elephantiasis is an uncommon, but deformative and progressive cutaneous disease caused by chronic lymphedema and recurrent streptococcal or Staphylococcus infections of the abdominal wall. We present 3 cases of patients with morbid obesity who presented to our hospital with abdominal wall swelling, thickening, erythema, and pain. The abdominal...

Nodular tertiary syphilis in an immunocompetent patient*

Acquired syphilis can be divided into primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary stages. About 25% of patients with untreated primary syphilis will develop late signs that generally occur after three to five years, with involvement of several organs. The authors present an immunocompetent female who developed a tertiary stage syphilis presenting with long-standing nodular plaques.

Tertiary Syphilis Presenting as Manic Depressive Psychosis

With the advent of Penicillin, tertiary manifestations of syphilis have become a rarity, while atypical forms are often encountered. Usually the form of neurosyphilis seen by psychiatrists is General Paresis of the Insane (GPI) and Taboparesis. Unlike the grandiose forms seen earlier, the cases of GPI today present with a dementic picture (Dewhurst, 1969; Hahn, 1959). We report a case where Ter...

Elephantiasis

Taming elephantiasis with acitretin

Medical School, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2050, Australia We present two patients with elephantiasis nostras verrucosa of the lower limbs which improved with oral acitretin. One patient was young and otherwise well while the other was a diabetic with multiple co-morbidities. The treatment was well tolerated and resulted in flattening of verrucous and hyperkeratotic skin lesions ...