Colonic malacoplakia--occurrence in a family. Report of cases

A family with two cases of documented colonic malacoplakia is reported. Details regarding the younger sister have been published previously and those of the elder are reported in this paper. Two brothers were found to have strongly positive purified protein derivative and histologic evidence of nonspecific colitis, but without clinical, endoscopic, or histopathologic evidence of malacoplakia. The parents are first cousins and have a total of 13 children. A computer search of the literature revealed no previous reports on familial occurrence of this disease. Thus, the authors consider this to be the first report of malacoplakia in siblings of the same family and suggest adding genetic predisposition in the pathogenesis of the disease.