Introduction Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) is the most common of the hereditary autoinflammatory disorders. FMF is caused by mutations of MEFV gene which encodes for pyrin. It has been recently reported that frequency of FMF-like symptoms decreases from patients carrying two high penetrance mutations towards patients with a single low penetrance mutation. The effectiveness of interleukin (...

Introduction PFAPA syndrome (acronym for periodic fever, aphthous stomatitis, pharyngitis and cervical adenitis) is the most common cause of periodic fever in childhood. It is considered part of the wide family of the autoinflammatory diseases, but a genetic or molecular marker hasn’t been identified yet, therefore, its etiology is still unknown. Diagnosis is essentially based on clinical crite...

Introduction PFAPA syndrome (periodic fever, aphtous stomatitis, pharyngitis, adenitis) is an autoinflammatory disease, for which no genetic marker has been identified yet, and its etiology remains unknown. However, the clinical and biochemical similarities to other autoinflammatory conditions, including Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF), suggest that a genetic impairment might constitute the ...

Introduction Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) is an autosomal recessive autoinflammatory disorder due to MEFV mutations and one of the most frequent Mediterranean genetic diseases. The observation of many heterozygous patients in whom a second mutated allele was excluded led to propose that heterozygosity could be causal; however, this might often be coincidental due to the very high rate of ...

It has been suggested that MEVF mutations offer advantage against infections, including tuberculosis. Bearing in mind the central role of TLR-2 and TLR-4 in the recognition of pathogens, we conducted this study to examine whether the TLR2-R753Q, TLR4-D299G, TLR4-T399I common polymorphisms are associated with susceptibility to familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) or affect the course of the diseas...

Objective Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) is an autosomal recessive disease characterized by recurrent attacks of fever and peritonitis, pleuritis, arthritis or an erysipelaslike skin disorder. The disease may present at any age, more than 80% of patients being symptomatic by the age of 20 yr. Its main long-term complication is amyloid A (AA) amyloidosis, a severe manifestation with poor pro...

Introduction Cutaneous Polyarteritis Nodosa (cPAN) is a rare type of vasculitis affecting small-to-medium-size arteries. It is distinct from systemic PAN in that it lacks significant internal organ involvement. Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) is the most common inherited autoinflammatory disease, characterized by recurrent, self–limited attacks of fever and aseptic polyserositis. PAN is cons...

Fabry disease (FD) is an inherited metabolic disorder caused by partial or full inactivation of the lysosomal hydrolase α-galactosidase A (α-GAL). The impairment of α-GAL results in the accumulation of undegraded glycosphingolipids in lysosomes and subsequent cell and microvascular dysfunctions. This study reports the clinical, biochemical, and molecular characterization of 15 members of the sa...

OBJECTIVES Given the pathological similarities between Behçet's disease (BD), Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF), TNF receptor-associated periodic syndrome (TRAPS) and Crohn's disease (CD) we evaluated the frequency of mutations and polymorphisms in MEFV, TNFRSF1A and CARD15 in Israeli BD patients of either Jewish or Arab descent. METHODS Fifty-four BD patients (11 Jews and 43 Arabs), evaluat...