Abstract
The patient, 39 year-old female, started to have polyarthralgia on both hand fingers in Oct. 1985, extending to bilateral wrist and shoulder joints with morning stiffness in Dec. 1985. Laboratory data showed elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate, hyper-γ-globulinemia, positive rheumatoid factor, positive anti-nuclear antibody with speckled pattern and marked hypocomplementemia. Typical urticarial skin eruption on face and extremities with slight itching appeared on Mar. 1986. The histological findings in skin biopsy revealed neutrophil infiltration around the small vessels in epidermis. She began to have high fever, pain and swelling on bilateral upper arms and right side of thigh, macrohematuria, abdominal pain on Apr. 1986. For the first moment, the diagnosis of hypocomplementemic urticarial vasculitis syndrome was made according to preliminary diagnostic criteria proposed by Schwartz et al. in 1982. Prednisolone at initial dosage of 60mg per day was used for therapy, followed by marked improvement of clinical symptoms. Hypocomplementemia was, however, continued during clinical remission.
