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A rare case of ulcerative colitis exacerbated by VZV infection

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Abstract

A 16-years old man with severe ulcerative colitis (UC) was admitted to our hospital. After initiating treatment with corticosteroid for UC, chicken pox appeared. At the same time of appearance of chicken pox, the disease activity of UC was exacerbated. After initiating the treatment with acyclovir, both chicken pox and UC improved. Because colonoscopic findings revealed the remaining of moderately active UC, initiating the treatment with infliximab could induce clinical remission of UC without relapse of varicella-zoster virus (VZV) infection. This is a very rare case of UC with concomitant VZV infection. According to our report, the vaccination for VZV prior to immunosuppressive treatments would be necessary for VZV naïve patients with UC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Digestive Disease Center, The Tazuke Kofukai Medical Research Institute, Kitano Hospital, 2-4-20 Ohgimach, Kita-ku, Osaka, 530-8480, Japan

    Satoshi Nishimura, Takuya Yoshino, Yoshiki Fujikawa, Masaki Watanabe & Shujiro Yazumi

Authors
  1. Satoshi Nishimura
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  2. Takuya Yoshino
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  3. Yoshiki Fujikawa
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  4. Masaki Watanabe
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  5. Shujiro Yazumi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shujiro Yazumi.

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Conflict of Interest:

Satoshi Nishimura, Takuya Yoshino, Yoshiki Fujikawa, Masaki Watanabe and Shujiro Yazumi declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human/Animal Rights:

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008(5).

Informed Consent:

Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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Nishimura, S., Yoshino, T., Fujikawa, Y. et al. A rare case of ulcerative colitis exacerbated by VZV infection. Clin J Gastroenterol 8, 390–392 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12328-015-0613-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12328-015-0613-8

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