Research Article: Autoimmune Haemolytic Anaemia as a Rare and Potentially Serious Complication of Crohn’s Disease in a 11-Year-Old Child—Case Report and Minireview
Abstract:
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is the term given to a heterogeneous group of chronic inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract (GI). These include ulcerative colitis (UC), where the inflammatory process involves only the intestinal mucosa, and Crohn’s disease (CD), where it can involve the entire wall of the GI in all of its sections. In addition to typical gastrointestinal complaints, IBD manifests with a range of extraintestinal symptoms involving inter alia the eyes, joints, skin, liver and biliary tract. These can cause a number of extraintestinal complications; of these, one of the most common is anaemia, usually resulting from nutritional deficiencies, especially iron, or chronic inflammation. When treating patients with IBD, it is important to consider the possibility of rare but serious complications, including autoimmune haemolytic anaemia (AIHA). This condition occurs in only 0.2 to 1.7% of UC cases and is even rarer in CD. AIHA is usually mild but can occur suddenly and cause very rapid anaemia. In the article presented here, we describe the case of a patient who developed AIHA two years after a diagnosis of CD, causing a life-threatening diagnostic and therapeutic challenge for the medical team.
Introduction:
Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) are characterized by chronic inflammation of the intestinal wall and a chronic and recurrent course. The group includes ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD) [1,2,3]. The pathogenesis of IBD is not yet fully understood, but its development is known to be influenced by the dysregulation of specific and non-specific immune responses, environmental factors, gut microbiota and genetic factors [3,4]. Although IBD is a disease of the gastrointestinal tract, its symptoms are…
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