Necrotizing vasculitis as the initial manifestation of rheumatoid arthritis.

A 64-year-old Black woman presented with high titer serum rheumatoid factor (RF), pelvic girdle weakness, sensory mononeuropathy, pulmonary fibrosis, and muscle histologic evidence of small artery necrotizing vasculitis. High dose corticosteroid therapy was followed by clinical improvement and reduction in serum RF titer. Four years later, and 9 months after discontinuance of corticosteroids, she developed an inflammatory polyarthritis, recurrent muscle weakness, and left foot drop, concomitantly with circulating immune complexes and extremely high titer serum RF. Necrotizing vasculitis is a distinctly rare presenting manifestation of rheumatoid disease.

Bacterial monarthritis due to Neisseria meningitidis in systemic lupus erythematosus.

Two patients with systemic lupus erythematosus developed monarticular infectious arthritis, in which Neisseria meningitidis was recovered from knee synovial fluid. In one instance, the sole manifestation of meningococcal disease was a chronic, indolent, erosive monarthritis. In the second, a febrile, bacteremic illness presented with an acute, septic arthritis.

Primary familial bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome.

We identified bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome in 19 of 43 living persons of a nonconsanguineous family. No single common etiologic feature was seen. Sixty-three percent of the afflicted kindred had symptomatic digital flexor tenosynovitis. Noninflammatory thickening of the flexor retinaculum or tendon sheaths, or both, was the commonest surgical finding. The 44% prevalence, early age of onset, and equal sex ratio differ from idiopathic carpal tunnel syndrome. Family pedigree suggests an inheritable disorder transmitted by an autosomal dominant gene with a high degree of penetrance.