A Patient With Thiamine Deficiency Exhibiting Muscle Edema Suggested by MRI

Case Report: Severe Edema and Marked Weight Gain Induced by Marginal Thiamine Deficiency in a Patient With Alcohol Dependency and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Background: Patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD) may develop peripheral edema due to alcohol-related liver, renal, or heart disease. Thiamine deficiency is reported to occur in AUD and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Thiamine deficiency may also cause peripheral edema. Thiamine is essential for optimal glucose metabolism through its role as an essential co-factor for key enzymes in intermediary metabolism. Since glucose metabolism worsens under diabetic conditions, it seems that a relative shortage of thiamine may occur more easily in patients with diabetes mellitus.

Case Presentation: A 59-year-old Japanese man was admitted to the hospital with severe peripheral edema. His background history included alcohol liver disease (ALD), chronic renal failure (CRF), and T2DM. His body mass index (BMI) at admission was 37.7 kg/m² and this represented a 30 kg increase in body weight over 2 months. Laboratory investigations showed anemia, liver and renal injury, hyperglycemia, and marginal hypothyroidism. The plasma thiamine diphosphate concentration was 20 ng/mL (reference range: 24–66 ng/mL). Diet therapy of 1,600 kcal/day and intravenous fursultiamine hydrochloride therapy (50 mg/once a day, seven days) was commenced in combination with intravenous diuretics. After one week, the plasma thiamine concentration was 853 ng/mL, and the patient's body weight had reduced by 18 kg.

Conclusions: Patients with T2DM and AUD may develop severe peripheral edema in the context of marginal thiamine deficiency. Fursultiamine hydrochloride (50 mg/once a day, seven days) restored normal plasma thiamine concentrations and may have contributed to the rapid resolution of severe peripheral edema in this case. Empirical treatment with thiamine should be considered in patients with severe peripheral edema in the context of AUD and T2DM.

Colchicine Myopathy: A Case Series Including Muscle MRI and ABCB1 Polymorphism Data

Colchicine is a medication most commonly used in the treatment of gout and familial mediterannean fever. A rare complication of therapy is toxicity causing proximal myopathy and polyneuropathy. Colchicine myopathy has been associated with the coadministration of other medications with colchicine, such as statins or tacrolimus, and is more common in patients with renal impairment. Otherwise, it is unclear which patients are at greatest risk of developing this adverse drug reaction. ABCB1 is important to the metabolism of colchicine, so we speculated that it was possible that colchicine myopathy patients may have a particular genotype that is associated with this side effect. We describe two cases of colchicine myopathy which occurred with co-administration of rosuvastatin. From one case, we present the first published data on muscle MRI in this condition. We additionally present an analysis of four genetic polymorphisms in ABCB1 and transcript levels in muscle tissue, and demonstrate the descriptive finding of reduced ABCB1 transcript levels in the colchicine myopathy patients.