Amyloidosis and crohn's disease

Secondary amyloidosis is a rare but serious complication of inflammatory bowel disease that may influence the prognosis even more than the underlying disease. Due to a better knowledge of the association of secondary amyloidosis to inflammatory bowel disease, early diagnosis of this complication is becoming more frequent, but its treatment continues to pose a challenge. We report 4 cases of patients with Crohn's disease and amyloidosis diagnosed in the inflammatory bowel disease Units of Toledo and Ciudad Real, which represent 0.68% of the patients with Crohn's disease of our health areas. There have been not cases of amyloidosis in patients with ulcerative colitis. In our 4 patients the secondary amyloidosis was clearly related to Crohn's disease, which was often of fistulising type. The predominant clinical picture of amyloidosis was nephrotic syndrome. The patients responded to medical and surgical treatment of Crohn's disease and colchicine, which improved renal function in all cases except in one who required kidney transplantation.