An unusual cause of ascites: hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis.

Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis is character-ized by fever, hepatosplenomegaly, cytopenia, hyper-triglyceridemia, hypofibrinogenemia, and hemophago-cytosis. Ascites is not mentioned as a symptom of hemophagocytic syndrome. We report a one month-old girl suffering from familial erythrophagocytic lympho-histiocytosis, who presented with ascites.

Bone mineral density in response to two different regimes in rickets.

The aim of this study was to compare the bone mineral density (BMD) of two different treatment regimens in infants with nutritional vitamin D deficient rickets (VDR). Ten patients (Group 1) were treated with a single dose of 600,000 IU of oral vitamin D3 and another ten patients (Group 2) were treated with 20,000 IU/day of oral vitamin D3 for 30 days. BMD was measured in the lumbar spine twice in all infants before the treatment and on the 31st day after initiating the treatment. The increases of BMD after treatment compared to pretreatment levels were statistically significant in both groups (P = 0.005 in Group 1 and P = 0.047 in Group 2). The increments of BMD were statistically similar between Group 1 and 2 (P = 0.096). The present study suggests that these two different treatment regimens bring about similar healing in BMD.