A compelling intervention to maintain healthy gut microbiota in graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD) is fecal microbial transplantation (FMT). To examine its role in GVHD, we conducted a systemic literature search using multiple electronic databases. Upon pooling of data, 79 patients from six studies and five case reports were included. Complete remission (CR) occurred in 55.9% of patients, and partial remission (PR) occurred in 26.5% of patients (82.4% overall response rate). A limited number of patients had treatment-related mortality (TRM), while few showed mild gastrointestinal (GI)-related and non-GI adverse effects. None of the studies directly examined the role of FMT in the prevention of GVHD. In conclusion, FMT seems to be a safe and effective strategy for the management of GVHD based on the current evidence. Due to the small number of patients evaluated and the absence of randomized data, one cannot portray FMT as a standard of care yet; however, the low toxicity along with the clinical improvement justifies this modality to be tested in a randomized fashion.
Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) is often associated with autoimmune paraneoplastic manifestations. Seronegative arthritis is among one of them. Very rarely, pseudogout demonstrated as paraneoplastic autoimmune manifestations of MDS has been adumbrated so far. Our case would be the another addition in the series. Our patient is an 83-year-old male lately diagnosed with MDS. After six months of initial diagnosis, he had a sudden onset episode of pain and swelling involving left wrist. Synovial fluid analysis from respective radiocarpal joint confirmed the presence of intracellular positively birefringent rhomboid shaped crystals of calcium pyrophosphate dihydrate (CPPD). This was followed by another two flares of pseudogout involving right knee and lumbar spine at separate time intervals. Each of the episodes mentioned above responded well to intravenous and oral steroids. After the third bout, he was started treatment with azacitidine which showed effective abatement of further episodes of pseudogout up until now.
Synchrony of colorectal adenocarcinoma with neuroendocrine tumor (NET) and hyperparathyroidism with colon adenocarcinoma is a rare entity, reported in a handful of cases. We authors would like to report a rare case of coexistence of poorly differentiated colon adenocarcinoma, NET of appendix and hyperparathyroidism. A 43-year-old Caucasian female was diagnosed with metastatic colon adenocarcinoma involving the caecum and appendiceal orifice. The resected specimen also confirmed presence of concurrent well-differentiated NET in distal half of appendix. For this patient, serum chemistry was significant for severe hypercalcemia with elevated parathyroid hormone and fairly normal range parathyroid hormone-related peptide. Importantly, association among the aforementioned conditions remains elusive and warrants further research; nevertheless, surveillance procedures could be performed in patients, if a correlation exists at all.