[Constipation and digestive bleeding as an atypical presentation of Whipple's disease]

Whipple's disease is a rare systemic disease of infectious etiology. Its clinical presentation is highly variable. The most common symptoms are diarrhea, weight loss, abdominal pain and joint manifestations. Non-digestive manifestations frequently precede digestive symptoms by several years. For all these reasons, diagnosis is difficult. Definitive diagnosis is established by the finding of PAS-positive macrophages in the lamina propria of the thin intestine. It is important to start appropriate antibiotic therapy early, as this improves the prognosis. We present the case of a male patient in whom the first manifestations of the disease were constipation and upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage, two forms of clinical presentation that have rarely been described in the literature on Whipple's disease.