Familial Mediterranean Fever

Abstract

Introduction Familial Mediterranean fever is a disease entity consisting of chronic, recurrent episodes of fever and pain—abdominal, thoracic, or joint pain, occurring either singly or in various combinations. A similar clinical entity has been widely recorded in the medical literature under various names. In 1908, Janeway and Mosenthal 1 reported recurrent attacks of abdominal pain in a 16-year-old Jewish girl as An Unusual Paroxysmal Syndrome. Subsequently the disease has been referred to as benign paroxysmal peritonitis (Siegal, 1945 5 ); periodic abdominalgia, periodic peritonitis (Reimann, 1949, 1954 7,8 ); la maladie periodique (Mamou and Cattan, 1952 11 ); familial Mediterranean fever (Heller, Sohar, and Sherf, 1957 17 ; Lawrence and Mellinkoff, 1959 19 ); familial recurring polyserositis (Priest and Nixon, 1959 20 ), and the Armenian Disease. The literature contains reports of syndromes resembling familial Mediterranean fever as examples of gastrointestinal allergy, Henoch's purpura, and abdominal epilepsy. The disease is familiar to the internists but prior