Case Report Takayasu’s Arteritis and Crohn’s Disease in a Young Hispanic Female

Copyright © 2014 Namrata Singh 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. Takayasu’s arteritis (TA) and Crohn’s disease (CD) are chronic inflammatory granulomatous disorders of undetermined etiology. TA is a large vessel vasculitis with a predilection for the aorta and its branches in young women of Asian descent; whereas CD has characteristic gastrointestinal manifestations more prevalent in young Caucasians. We describe a case of both diseases in a young Hispanic female, review the literature, and impart new insight on possible genetic linkage and the role of interleukin 12 B (IL-12B) as the common autoimmune mechanism and potential therapeutic target in this rare disease combination. 1