Knuckle Pigmentation: A Clue to Systemic Illness

Cutaneous blastomycosis: a clue to a systemic disease*

A 55-year-old male presented with back pain and slightly tender annular plaques with central ulceration on his face. A skin biopsy revealed scattered yeast with broad based buds. A CT scan of the abdomen revealed a pathologic T12 fracture. Tissue obtained from the spine confirmed budding yeasts. The patient was diagnosed with disseminated blastomycosis. The patient was treated with amphotericin...

Orthostatic hypotension as a clue to primary systemic amyloidosis.

Methods We reviewed the records of 138 patients with primary systemic amyloidosis seen at the Mayo Clinic from 1935 through 1964. In all instances, the presence of amyloidosis was proved by tissue biopsy or postmortem examination. The criteria for the diagnosis of orthostatic hypotension included a decrease in the standing blood pressure from the recumbent blood pressure of 30 mm Hg systolic an...

RNA Editing—Systemic Relevance and Clue to Disease Mechanisms?

Recent advances in sequencing technologies led to the identification of a plethora of different genes and several hundreds of amino acid recoding edited positions. Changes in editing rates of some of these positions were associated with diseases such as atherosclerosis, myopathy, epilepsy, major depression disorder, schizophrenia and other mental disorders as well as cancer and brain tumors. Th...

Rotavirus Infection: A Systemic Illness?

S ince the 1950s, rotavirus has been recognized in veterinary circles as an important cause of diarrhoea in young livestock and poultry. In the 1970s, the virus was found to be a cause of infantile diarrhoea in humans [1], and after this discovery rotavirus rapidly became established as the most prevalent cause of paediatric diarrhoea [2]. Rotavirus preferentially infects the mature villous ent...

Recurrent Acute Pancreatitis: A Diagnostic Clue to Primary Hyperparathyroidism