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Effective treatment of Kimura’s disease with leflunomide in combination with glucocorticoids

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Abstract

Kimura’s disease (KD) is a rare, benign, chronic inflammatory disease which typically presents as persisting or recurring tumor-like lesions in the head and neck area that can be easily misdiagnosed. We report one patient with KD treated with leflunomide in combination with glucocorticoids and analyzed the literature on treatment of KD. The patient had a recurrent mass in the left upper arm with eosinophilia and elevated serum IgE but no renal involvement. The clinical manifestations improved markedly within 1 month, and blood eosinophil count and serum IgE normalized. Corticosteroids were then tapered gradually without recurrence or severe side effects in the 2-year follow-up period. Literature analysis identified four different non-drug interventions and 18 different drugs for treating KD, most of which were obtained from case reports. Our use of combination therapy of leflunomide and glucocorticoids suggests the need for a controlled trial for the treatment of this rare disorder.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully thank the cooperation of the KD patient reported here, as well as the members of the medical staff and pathologist who generously collaborated with this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Rheumatology, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China, 510120

    Lie Dai, Xiu-Ning Wei, Dong-Hui Zheng, Ying-Qian Mo & Bai-Yu Zhang

  2. Department of Infection Genetics, Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Braunschweig, Germany

    Frank Pessler

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  1. Lie Dai
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  2. Xiu-Ning Wei
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Correspondence to Lie Dai.

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Dai, L., Wei, XN., Zheng, DH. et al. Effective treatment of Kimura’s disease with leflunomide in combination with glucocorticoids. Clin Rheumatol 30, 859–865 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-011-1689-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-011-1689-2

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