Hello doctor, My daughter (4 years old) had an eye injury around seven months back. She is now diagonised with granulomatous panuvietis. I have consulted in person around six opthalmologists and they have told that it is due to eye injury. However, one of them wanted me to go for auto immune tests just to rule that out and asked me to consult a rhemutologist as well. My daughter did not have any joint pains or any other problems at all. It was only eye inflammation. We did all the tests including CPR, ESR, RA factor, ANA and every possible test. Tb also, jaundice LFT, X-ray, B-scan, C-scan. All of them are normal. Only that she has cataract in eye due to inflammation which opthals told that it is due to injury as it was ignored and not treated. Later, the doctor prescribed her Deflazacort 18 mg. She was on medication for three weeks and we were shifting our house to another city. She suddenly fell ill due to hot weather. Physicians asked to stop steroids immediately and the opthal doctor also asked us to go ahead with them. She was ill only for a day. Next day, we shifted back to our native which is much cooler and she was absolutely fine without any medications. However, after a day, she started having severe joint pains only in her knees. Since we were in a village,we could not take her to doctor. After 4 to 5 days she started getting swelling in both the knees. When we rushed to doctor, they claimed it as autoimmune. Now we are in confusion. Till she was taking steroids ,she was fine. Rather, even before she was on steroids also, she had no problems. However, after pulling off steroids, she has inflammation and there is no evidence of why this inflammation has occured, if it is autoimmune. As all her reports are normal and only her joint inflammation which we believe is due to the medicines that she took, can anyone conclude that its autoimmune? Does any knee inflammation in a normal person means autoimmune? Is inflammation in any part of the body related to only auto immune diseases. Is there no other reason? Now the doctor is saying that she has to be on immunosuppressants for two years. Is this only because she has inflammation in leg which also occured due to withdrawal of steroids and there is no other reason?
Hello. I shall try to answer your queries one by one. Eye injury may sometimes set up the autoimmunity. It is not clear in your question how much eye problem she currently has. Inflammation anywhere in body could be set up by infection, autoimmunity, or auto-inflammatory disease. The age group of the patient suggest the possibility of oligoarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis. In this, eye involvement is also common, in the form of uveitis. But it can be definitely diagnosed only after physical examination. Most of the blood tests are usually normal in it. If it is juvenile arthritis, then long time treatment is recommended. Wysolone and Folitrax are commonly used to treat it. Other possibilities for garanulomatous uveitis include tuberculosis and sarcoidosis. You should consult with a rheumatologist for establishing a definite diagnosis. In addition to the tests described, I would also suggest to get HLA B27 to be done.