Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0039483 (giant cell arteritis)
 3,204 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The occurrence of acute leukemia in patients receiving chemotherapeutic agents for malignant disease has been well established. Recent reports have suggested that chemotherapeutic drugs used to treat inflammatory conditions may have an oncogenic potential. From 1969 to 1977, 11 patients with a variety of collagen-vascular diseases who developed acute nonlymphocytic leukemia were seen at the Cleveland Clinic. Rheumatoid arthritis was the most common underlying disease, in addition to giant cell arteritis, polyarteritis nodosa, chronic glomerulonephritis, and scleroderma. All patients were treated with alkylating agents, and 10 of the 11 received multiple cytotoxic agents. According to the French-American-British classification there were six examples of M4 (myelomonocytic leukemia), with single examples of M1 (myeloblastic leukemia without maturation), M2 (myeloblastic leukemia with maturation), M5a (monocytic leukemia, poorly differentiated), M5b (monocytic leukemia, differentiated), and M6 (erythroleukemia). Cytogenetic studies were abnormal in five patients studied, showing varying degrees of aneuploidy. All patients died, and the mean duration of time from the diagnosis of leukemia to death was four and one-half months, with only one complete remission.
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PMID:Acute nonlymphocytic leukemia in patients receiving chemotherapy for nonmalignant diseases. 677 41

Fever of unknown origin (FUO) is a common clinical diagnostic dilemma. In the elderly, causes of FUO most commonly include malignancy or infection, and less commonly include collagen vascular diseases. Among the collagen vascular diseases causing FUO in the elderly, polymyalgia rheumatica/temporal arteritis, and adult Still's disease (adult juvenile rheumatoid arthritis) are difficult diagnoses to prove. Among the infectious causes of FUO in the elderly are subacute bacterial endocarditis, intra-abdominal abscesses, and extrapulmonary tuberculosis. In the elderly, neoplastic causes of FUO include lymphomas, hepatomas, renal cell carcinomas, and hepatic or central nervous system metastases. Acute leukemias, particularly during "blast" transformation, may present as acute fevers in the absence of infection, but are rare causes of FUO. Preleukemia/myelodysplastic syndromes are exceedingly rare causes of FUO. We present a case of an elderly man who presented with findings that initially suggested adult Still's disease. Prolonged and profound monocytosis provided the key clue to his subsequent diagnosis of preleukemia/myelodysplastic syndrome. In this patient, a positive Naprosyn test result also suggested a neoplastic cause for his FUO. After months of prolonged fevers, myelocytes/metamyelocytes were eventually demonstrated in his peripheral smear during hospital evaluation. These findings, in concert with the persistent monocytosis, highly elevated ferritin levels, polyclonal gammopathy on serum protein electrophoresis, and eventual presence of myelocytes/metamyelocytes on peripheral smear, prompted a bone marrow test that demonstrated blast cells confirming the diagnosis of preleukemia myelodysplastic syndrome as the cause of this patient's FUO.
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PMID:Fever of unknown origin due to preleukemia/myelodysplastic syndrome: the diagnostic importance of monocytosis with elevated serum ferritin levels. 1686