Case report: a man with untreated rheumatoid arthritis, cryoglobulinemic vasculitis, membranous nephropathy and pulmonar
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CASE REPORT
Open Access
Case report: a man with untreated rheumatoid arthritis, cryoglobulinemic vasculitis, membranous nephropathy and pulmonary sarcoidosis Qiyu Wang1* , Juan P. Ruiz2 and Peter D. Hart2
Abstract Background: Glomerular involvement in rheumatoid arthritis has been known to be associated with treatment side effects from medications and secondary amyloidosis. However, limited basic science and clinical studies have been performed to address the potential disease specific immune-mediated mechanisms causing secondary glomerular pathology, its various types of presentation, and the potential treatments. Case presentation: A 41-year-old man with chronic active rheumatoid arthritis presented with nephrotic syndrome and was found to have membranous nephropathy with eosinophilic intracapillary thrombi on renal biopsy. Proteinuria persisted despite complete withdrawal from non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Throughout the disease course, he developed cryoglobulinemic vasculitis and pulmonary sarcoidosis, both of which achieved clinical resolution with glucocorticoids. However, only partial improvement was observed in proteinuria with treatment of steroids and Rituximab. Conclusion: Our case presented a unique and complicated clinical phenotype of active rheumatoid arthritis, with clinical features of cryoglobulinemic vasculitis, histopathologic features of membranous and cryoglobulinemic nephropathy in the absence of DMARDs use, as well as pulmonary sarcoidosis. We speculate that there is a wider spectrum of glomerular disease in patients with untreated rheumatoid arthritis. In addition, the potential association between rheumatoid arthritis and cryoglobulinemic vasculitis should probably be revisited and requires further studies to elucidate the underlying mechanisms and treatment options. Keywords: Case report, Nephrotic syndrome, Membranous nephropathy, Rheumatoid arthritis, Cryoglobulinemic vasculitis, Pulmonary sarcoidosis
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Internal Medicine Residency Program, Department of Medicine, Cook County Health, Chicago, IL, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence
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