Tropical Splenomegaly Syndrome: Long-term Proguanil Therapy Correlated with Spleen Size, Serum IgM, and Lymphocyte Transformation

Tropical splenomegaly syndrome: long-term proguanil therapy correlated with spleen size, serum IgM, and lymphocyte transformation.

Forty-three patients with an initial diagnosis of tropical splenomegaly syndrome were placed on long-term proguanil therapy. All patients who failed to respond to proguanil and who were adequately followed up developed identifiable disease, usually malignant lymphoma or chronic lymphatic leukaemia. In patients who responded to proguanil IgM values were always very high and phytohaemagglutinin (...

Relapses after withdrawal of proguanil treatment in tropical splenomegaly syndrome.

After the remission of symptoms and reduction in spleen size while on proguanil therapy four patients with the tropical splenomegaly syndrome defaulted from treatment. The withdrawal of proguanil caused a recrudescence of original symptoms, splenomegaly, and a return of the initially raised serum IgM. Complete return to normal values was again effected with proguanil therapy.The role of the spl...

CONFERENCES AND MEETINGS Tropical Splenomegaly Syndrome

A one-day symposium was held at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London on 17 November. The participants comprised experts in tropical medicine, parasitology, pathology, immunology, and haematology, most of whom had had personal experience with splenomegaly in the tropics. They met to review the present state of knowledge and to define those areas where further research was likely to be...

Hyperreactive malaria in expatriates returning from sub-Saharan Africa.

The extreme presentation of hyperreactive malaria is hyperreactive malarial splenomegaly syndrome (HMS). Some patients present with a less pronounced syndrome. To investigate whether the degree of splenomegaly correlates with the degree of immune stimulation, whether prophylaxis or recent treatment play a role, and whether short therapy alone is effective, we examined retrospectively the medica...

Splenectomy for Tropical Splenomegaly