A peculiar case of allergic angiitis

A 27-year-old male patient with a history of bronchial asthma showed polyarticular swellings, skin purpura and an acute pneumopathy and died 15 days after the acute onset of symptoms. Necropsy confirmed the diagnosis of confluent bronchopneumonia, but in all the organs, including the bone marrow, there were numerous eosinophils, fibrinoid necrosis of arteriovenous walls in the viscera and parieto-vascular infiltrates with mononuclear cells and many eosinophils. These lesions, exclusively around the vessels, were considered to express a variant or a morphogenetic stage of the Churg-Strauss angiitis.