MPA with Aorta involvement

[JaneLE]

Hi All, Latest confused question

I have MPA but a recent MRI on my heart has shown some damage to the Aorta, indicating a large vessel vasculitis. Has anybody seen similar - this has stumped me!

[PMRpro]

As far as I know any vasculitis that affects an artery can cause damage to it. Which vasculitis you are diagnosed as having depends on the symptoms and results of various tests - but having a bulk of symptoms that suggests vasculitis X doesn't mean you couldn't develop a degree of another (does that make sense?).

And I found this immediately on Medline: "We report a case of microscopic polyangiitis (mPA) and giant cell arteritis (GCA) (polyangiitis overlap syndrome) ..." but I can't tell you much of what it says since it is in Japanese

However - there are several reports in the medical literature of people with something similar, each a different pairing, but it seems to be quite rare. "Polyangiitis overlap syndrome (POS) describes systemic vasculitis that cannot be classified into one of the well-defined syndromes." - so someone has vasculitis with some symptoms of one and some of another, like MPA and a large vessel version in your case. I know patients with GCA are at risk of aortic involvement and that is a large vessel vasculitis.

Autoimmune disease is a funny thing (funny peculiar not funny haha) and having one is often accompanied by developing another at some point - or is we have all these symptoms and one set say it's one thing and then some others appear and it is realised we have the other? Whatever it is - I wish our immune systems would take a break...

[JaneLE Administrator]

Thank you so much... I like your humour. Very helpful thanks.