Genitourinary anomaly in congenital varicella syndrome.

Abstract

Sirs, We read with interest the article entitled “Genitourinary anomaly in congenital varicella syndrome: case report and review” by Fujita et al. [1] in the May 2004 issue of Pediatric Nephrology. The authors described a 1-year-old boy with congenital varicella syndrome who had vesicoureteric reflux and neurogenic bladder. The authors reviewed the literature and found 14 other cases of congenital varicella syndrome with urogenital anomalies. The most frequent urogenital anomaly was neurogenic bladder. We recently reported a male patient with congenital varicella syndrome with colonic atresias, neurogenic bladder, micropenis, and undescended testes [2]. In addition, the affected child had left microphthalmia, ipsilateral Horner syndrome, a hypoplastic left arm with a diminished sensation to pain, linear scarring on the left arm, left lumbar scoliosis, and a patulous hypotonic rectal sphincter. The occurrence of genitourinary anomalies in patients with congenital varicella syndrome may be more common than is presently appreciated and we would like to bring this to the attention of your readers.