title: Successful treatment of ulcerative colitis complicated by Sweet's syndrome by corticosteroid therapy and leukocytapheresis.
abstract: Ulcerative colitis is occasionally complicated by dermatological disorders presenting as extra-intestinal manifestations, including erythema nodosum and pyoderma gangrenosum. Sweet's syndrome is considered to be a rare cutaneous disease in patients with ulcerative colitis. To date, only 17 cases of Sweet's syndrome complicating ulcerative colitis have been reported in the English literature. Here, we report a case of a 41-year-old male who had been suffering from ulcerative colitis for 20 years. He was admitted to hospital with hematochezia, diarrhea and fever, and painful erythematous nodules on the face and arms. Histological examination of skin biopsies showed inflammatory cell infiltration composed mainly of neutrophils without evidence of necrotizing vasculitis, and the condition was diagnosed as Sweet's syndrome. The patient was treated with prednisolone and leukocytapheresis and the erythematous nodules on the skin, as well as the abdominal symptoms and endoscopic findings of ulcerative colitis, immediately improved. In this paper we report on this case and review the literature concerning ulcerative colitis and Sweet's syndrome.
authors.affiliation: First Department of Medicine, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, 1-20-1 Handayama Higashi-ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, 431-3192, Japan.
authors.forename: Tomohiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Terai
authors.affiliation: First Department of Medicine, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, 1-20-1 Handayama Higashi-ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, 431-3192, Japan. mitsu@hama-med.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Mitsushige
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sugimoto
authors.affiliation: First Department of Medicine, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, 1-20-1 Handayama Higashi-ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, 431-3192, Japan.
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Osawa
authors.affiliation: First Department of Medicine, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, 1-20-1 Handayama Higashi-ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, 431-3192, Japan.
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sugimoto
authors.affiliation: Center for Clinical Research, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Shizuoka, Japan.
authors.forename: Takahisa
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Furuta
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Diagnosis, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Shizuoka, Japan.
authors.forename: Shigeru
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kanaoka
authors.affiliation: First Department of Medicine, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, 1-20-1 Handayama Higashi-ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, 431-3192, Japan.
authors.forename: Mutsuhiro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ikuma
keywords: Neutrophilic dermatosis; Prednisolone; Sweet’s syndrome; Ulcerative colitis