I n a very important paper published recently in the Hellenic Journal of Cardiology,1 the authors described a 52-year-old female patient with no history and no predisposing factors for coronary artery disease, who developed chest pain with electrocardiographic changes suggesting coronary artery spasm following capecitabine administration for colorectal cancer. The authors of this report attribu...

BACKGROUND Recently, human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) reactivation has been frequently observed in patients with drug-induced hypersensitivity syndrome or drug rash with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms but not in patients with other types of drug eruptions, eg, Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN). This finding suggests that there is a close relationship between HHV-6 rea...

Dapsone syndrome is a rare hypersensitivity reaction to dapsone and is characterized by high fever, papular or exfoliative dermatitis, progressing to liver toxicity and generalized lymphadenopathy, resembling a mononucleosis infection. We report a patient who developed acute renal failure, as well as other complications characteristic of dapsone syndrome, during leprosy treatment. Renal involve...

Kounis syndrome is an allergy-associated acute coronary syndrome, which develops secondary to mast cell activation in coronary arteries due to hypersensitivity or anaphylactoid reaction (1). The triggering factors may be various drugs, food, environmental exposure, and intracoronary stents (2–4). In this case report, an extraordinary case of Kounis syndrome (acute myocardial infarction with con...

Several predisposing conditions have been associated with complex regional pain syndrome I (CRPS I). The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between a history of allergy/hypersensitivity reactions and CRPS I in orthopedic patients. Orthopedic patients with CRPS I (n=115) who experienced pain relief after a successful sympathetic nerve blockade were identified for study inclu...

The objectives of this study are 1) To review the published data and document the current knowledge on allergic manifestations to the fruit mango 2) To highlight the two distinct clinical presentations of hypersensitivity reactions caused by mango 3) To discuss the role of cross-reactivity 4) To increase awareness of potentially life threatening complications that can be caused by allergy to ma...

Glucocorticoids (GCs) are master regulators of systemic metabolism. Intriguingly, Cushing's syndrome, a disorder of excessive GCs, phenocopies several menopause-induced metabolic pathologies. Here, we show that the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) drives steatosis in hypogonadal female mice because hepatocyte-specific GR knockout mice are refractory to developing ovariectomy-induced steatosis. Intr...

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a very frequent functional gastrointestinal disorder characterized by recurrent abdominal pain or discomfort and alteration of bowel habits. The IBS physiopathology is extremely complex. Visceral hypersensitivity plays an important role in the pathogenesis of abdominal pain in both in vitro and in vivo models of this functional disorder. In order to obtain a ge...

The occurrence of hypersensitivity reactions including rare but life-threatening Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) and drug-induced hypersensitivity syndrome (HSS) limits the use of the anticonvulsant carbamazepine (CBZ). Human leukocyte antigen-B (HLA)-B 15:02 and HLA-A 31:01 have been identified as predictive genetic markers for CBZ hypersensitivity in Asian and European patients. To replicate t...