A case of Wegener's granulomatosis with anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA) is reported.
A 42-year-old female has complained of nasal pain, nasal bleeding and deformity of nose since September 1988. In March 1989 she complained of fever, hard hearing, cough, conjunctivitis and arthralgia. She was admitted in April 1989 because of further examination.
On admission to our hospital she had scleritis, saddle nose deformity, sinusitis and otitis media. Laboratory findings on admission were as follows: the erythrocyte sedimentation rate was 95mm/hour. CRP 18.8mg/d
l, RAHA 1: 2, 560, antinuclear antibody negative, 24-hour urinary protein was 0.7g/day and urinalysis revealed 8 white blood cells and many red blood cells, 1 hyaline cast per field. The creatinine clearance was 40.2
l/day. Nasal biopsy showed a granulomatous inflammation with vasculitis.
She was diagnosed as Wegener's granulomatosis and was treated with prednisolone 60mg/day and cyclophosphamide 100mg/day. Her clinical symptoms soon improved but her renal function became progressively worse. In May pulse therapy and plasmapheresis were performed and her renal function gradually improved. Prednisolone was tapered. In June she suffered from infection, and cefmetazole was started. Her liver function became worse, so cefmetazole and cyclophosphamide were discontinued. But her liver function did not improved. We thought that her liver dysfunction was due to fresh frozen plasma in plasmapheresis in May. Cyclophosphamide, 50mg/day, was started again. At present she is in remission.
The titer of ANCA was 1: 32 (by an indirect immunofluorescence assay) on admission, but negative in June when she had infection and in July when Wegener's granulomatosis was inactive. ANCA was first reported in a patient with active Wegener's granulomatosis by Woude et al. in 1985. Our case showed that ANCA was thought to be a serologic marker of diagnosis and disease activity in Wegener's granulomatosis.
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