Cryoglobulinemia due to Hepatitis C with Pulmonary Renal Syndrome

Copyright © 2013 Tariq Abdulkarim et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Cryoglobulinemia is an uncommon condition typically due to hepatitis C infection. Its clinical presentation is varied and often reflects deposition of immune complex and complement deposition. Renal compromise is observed in approximately one third of patients with mixed cryoglobulinemia and reports of concomitant pulmonary involvement are quite rare. We report a case of a patient who presented with pulmonary and renal manifestations of cryoglobulinemia with a serum rheumatoid factor over one hundred times the upper limit of normal and benefited from high-dose steroids and plasmapheresis in the acute setting. 1. Background Cryoglobulinemia is a rare entity typically due to hepatitis C infection whose widely variable presentation can make prompt and accurate diagnosis difficult. Many of the features of cryoglobulinemia are manifestations of immune complex and complement deposition in the small- and medium-sized vessels [1–4]. The resultant vasculitis is observed in multipl