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Prevalence of Whipple's disease in north-western Italy

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Abstract

Whipple's disease (WD) is a rare systemic infection due, in genetically susceptible individuals, to Tropheryma whipplei, a heterogeneous Gram-positive actinobacteria. Although it has already been recognised that WD affects mainly middle-aged Caucasian men, the prevalence of WD is virtually unknown. The annual incidence of WD in the general population is said to be less than 1 per 1,000,000, but scientific evidence for these figures is still lacking. On the basis of the number of patients recorded with a diagnosis of Whipple’s disease in the regional registers for rare diseases of Lombardia, Liguria and Piemonte-Valle d'Aosta regions, we studied the prevalence of WD in the north-western part of Italy. Forty-six patients with Whipple’s disease were recorded in these regions (13 females; mean age at diagnosis 52.1 ± 11.1 years). Since 16,130,725 inhabitants live in these four regions, prevalence of WD in the general population is 3/106 and almost 30 % of the patients are females. WD is certainly a rare disease but it also affects women in a considerable proportion of cases.

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Acknowledgments

We are in debt to Simone Baldovino, Erica Daina, and Mirella Rossi for providing anonymized data. We are also grateful to Susan West for reading and correcting the manuscript.

Funding

The study received no funding.

Conflict of interest

None to declare.

Ethical Statement

All patients had signed the informed consent as required by the Institutional Ethical Board that approved the study; population data were taken from the public dominion (www.tuttitalia.it/regioni/popolazioni).

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Correspondence to F. Biagi.

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Biagi, F., Balduzzi, D., Delvino, P. et al. Prevalence of Whipple's disease in north-western Italy. Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis 34, 1347–1348 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-015-2357-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-015-2357-2

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