Rheumatology 2002; 41: 1072-1073
© 2002 British Society for Rheumatology
Letters to the Editor |
A possible novel mechanism of opportunistic infection in systemic lupus erythematosus, based on a case of toxoplasmic encephalopathy
Department of Medicine,
1 Department of Neurosurgery and
2 Department of Pathology, Juntendo University Izu-Nagaoka Hospital, 1129 Nagaoka, Izu-Nagaoka-cho, Tagata-gun, Shizuoka 410-2295 and
3 Department of Internal Medicine and Rheumatology, Juntendo University School of Medicine, 2-1-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113, Japan
| The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below. |
SIR, Opportunistic infection is common in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). In some patients, it is difficult to distinguish between the effect of infection and exacerbation of SLE because both can produce similar symptoms [1]. Toxoplasma infection (toxoplasmosis) is generally benign in healthy persons, with a tendency to chronic latency. However, activation of toxoplasmosis in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection or organ transplantation may have serious consequences. There have been many reports of toxoplasmosis in