[A case of secondary systemic amyloidosis associated with rheumatoid arthritis after 3-year disease duration]

A 63-year-old woman who started to have polyarthralgia in December 1993 has been diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and treated with muscular injection of gold sodium thiomalate. She began to have nausea, vomiting, anorexia and watery diarrhea in October 1995. A year later, she had to receive intravenous infusion on admission since more frequent watery diarrhea occurred more than ten times within a day. On admission in our hospital in December 1996, she had proteinuria in addition to gastrointestinal symptoms. The biopsy specimen from stomach, duodenum and kidney proved systemic amyloidosis associated with RA. In spite of steroid-pulse, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and colchicine therapy, profound proteinuria in nephrotic syndrome was continued in association with hypoproteinemia, anasarca and renal failure. She was treated on hemodialysis and intravenous hyperalimentation (IVH) until November 1997 when A-V shunt operation on left forearm was performed. However, the shunt was not available for HD and she suffered from septicemia and died on December 1997. This patient was a rare case of secondary systemic amyloidosis associated with RA in early clinical course.