[What posttreatment monitoring in Whipple's disease? A case report]

The authors--which publish an overview about Whipple's disease in this issue, pages 609-611--report the case of a 67-year-old man admitted to the hospital because of migratory arthralgia, low-grade fever, lymphadenopathy, diarrhea, and impaired intestinal absorption. The microscopical examination of the intestinal mucosa showed an infiltration of the lamina propria by foamy PAS-positive macrophages. The patient was treated with antibiotics for 1 year and obtained clinical remission. The authors discuss if it is opportune, in subjects with this disease, to repeat the small-bowel biopsies at the end of the antibiotic treatment in absence of clinical manifestations of relapse or not.