Sweet syndrome subsequent to relapsing polychondritis and myelodysplastic syndrome in a Japanese patient.

Sir, Sweet syndrome is characterized by tender, erythematous plaques, most often on the head, neck or extremities. It is associated with haematological malignancies in more than 20% of cases (1, 2). Relapsing polychondritis (RP) is a rare rheumatological disorder in which recurrent episodes of inflammation result in destruction of cartilage of the ears and nose (3). Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) is a clonal disorder of haematopoiesis characterized by peripheral cytopaenias and dysplastic bone marrow, which is usually hypercellular. Diebold et al. (4) demonstrated that there was frequent evidence of MDS in their bone marrow study of RP patients. We report here a case of a patient with Japanese Sweet syndrome found subsequent to RP and MDS.