Vasculitis Health Article

Specific diseases

Multiple types of disease are associated with vasculitis. Many autoimmune diseases have vasculitis as one of their complications. These include systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, and polymyositis. Other types of diseases which have vasculitis as their major manifestations include:

• Polyarteritis nodosa. This is an extremely serious, systemic (affecting systems throughout the body) form of vasculitis. Small and medium arteries are involved, and the inflammation is so severe that the walls of the arteries may be destroyed. Any organ system, or multiple organ systems, may be affected. The most serious effects include kidney failure, complications involving the heart, gastrointestinal problems, and high blood pressure.
• Kawasaki's disease is an acute disease which primarily strikes young children. Fever and skin manifestations occur in all patients. While most patients recover completely, a few patients suffer from vasculitis in the heart. This is frequently fatal.
• Henoch-Schonlein purpura. While this frequently occurs in children, adults may also be affected. This disease tends to affect the skin, joints, gastrointestinal tract, and kidneys.
• Serum sickness occurs when an individual reacts to a component of a drug, for example penicillin. Symptoms of this are often confined to the skin, although fevers, joint pain, and swelling of lymph nodes may also occur.
• Temporal arteritis (also called giant cell arteritis) tends to involve arteries which branch off the major artery that leads to the head, called the carotid. An artery which feeds tissues in the area of the temple (the temporal artery) is often affected. Severe headaches are the most classic symptom. Other symptoms include fatigue, loss of appetite and then weight, fever, heavy sweating, joint pain, and pain in the muscles of the neck, shoulders, and back. If the vasculitis includes arteries which supply the eye, serious visual disturbance or even blindness may result.

• Takayasu's arteritis affects the aorta (the very large main artery that exits the heart and receives all of the blood to be delivered throughout the body), and arteries which branch off of the aorta. Initial symptoms include fatigue, fever, sweating at night, joint pain, and loss of appetite and weight. Every organ may be affected by this disease. A common sign of this disease is the inability to feel the pulse in any of the usual locations (the pulse is the regular, rhythmic sensation one can feel with a finger over an artery, for example in the wrist, which represents the beating of the heart and the regular flow of blood).
• Wegener's granulomatosis: This disease exerts its most serious effects on the respiratory tract. The vasculitis produced by this disease includes the formation of fibrous, scarring nodules called granulomas. Symptoms include nose bleeds, ear infections, cough, shortness of breath, and chest pain. There may be bleeding in the lungs, and a patient may cough up blood. The kidneys, eyes, and skin are also frequently involved.

Diagnosis

Diagnosis of any type of vasculitis involves demonstrating the presence of a strong inflammatory process. Tests which reveal inflammation throughout the body include erythrocyte sedimentation rate, blood tests which may reveal anemia and increased white blood cells, and tests to demonstrate the presence of immune complexes and/or antibodies circulating in the blood. An x-ray procedure, called angiography, involves injecting dye into a major artery, and then taking x-ray pictures to examine the blood vessels, in order to demonstrate the presence of inflammation of the vessel walls. Tissue samples (biopsies) may be taken from affected organs to demonstrate inflammation.

Treatment

Even though there are many different types of vasculitis, with many different symptoms based on the organ system affected, treatments are essentially the same. They all involve trying to decrease the activity of the immune system. Steroid medications (like prednisone) are usually the first types of drugs used. Steroids work by interfering with the chemicals involved in the inflammatory process. More potent drugs for severe cases of vasculitis have more serious side effects. These include drugs like cyclophosphamide. Cyclophosphamide works by actually killing cells of the patient's immune system.

Prognosis

The prognosis for vasculitis is quite variable. Some mild forms of vasculitis, such as those brought on by reactions to medications, may resolve totally on their own and not even require treatment. Temporal arteritis, serum sickness, Henoch-Schonlein purpura, and Kawasaki's disease usually have excellent prognoses, although when Kawasaki's affects the heart, there is a high death rate. Other types of vasculitis were always fatal, prior to the availability of prednisone and cyclophosphamide, and continue to have high rates of fatal complications. These include polyarteritis nodosa and Wegener's granulomatosis.

Prevention

Because so little is known about what causes a particular individual to develop vasculitis, there are no known ways to prevent it.