Adrenergic urticaria and rheumatoid arthritis in a patient with melanoma: an intricate medical management.

A 45-year-old woman with marital and working troubles, a personal history positive for malignant melanoma, and a family history of vitiligo presented with adrenergic urticaria (AU), which at first responded to propranolol, but later became unresponsive to both ?-blockers and antihistamines. Meanwhile, rheumatoid arthritis became apparent. Treatment with corticosteroids and methotrexate led to remission of neither the rheumatologic nor the dermatologic condition. Attempts to taper the immunosuppressive treatment were invariably followed by recurrence of adrenergic urticaria, which still proved unresponsive to propranolol, as did the rheumatoid arthritis. The courses of the diseases strictly paralleled each other. Rheumatoid arthritis could have triggered adrenergic urticaria by simply adding a supplemental stress, but also by systemically activating mast cells, which are known to be involved in the pathogenesis of chronic inflammatory diseases. A brief discussion of either the dermatological manifestations of, or treatments for rheumatoid arthritis is provided, in order to illustrate the kind of clinical difficulties that such atypical patients pose to physicians. Adrenergic urticaria is an uncommon yet probably under-diagnosed form of urticaria, which is considered a form of neurogenic acute reaction mainly triggered by acute stress. The author presents a case of AU, however, that is only partially explained by a stress setting, though it is strongly associated with the course of an autoimmune disease.