Kawasaki disease in adults: Observations in France and literature review.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Kawasaki disease (KD) is a vasculitis that mostly occurs in young children and rarely in adults. We analyzed the characteristics of adult-onset KD (AKD) in France. METHODS: We collected retrospective and prospective data for patients with a diagnosis of KD occurring after the age of 18 years. Cases were obtained via various French medical networks and identified from the international literature. RESULTS: We included 43 patients of AKD at 26 institution from 1992 to 2015, with mean (SD) age 30 (11) years (range 18-68) and sex ratio (M/F) 1.2; 34 patients met the American Heart Association criteria and 9 were incomplete AKD. The median time to diagnosis was 13 days (interquartile range 8-21). The main symptoms were fever (100%), exanthema (98%), changes in the extremities (91%), conjunctivitis (77%), oral cavity changes (89%), cervical adenitis (55%) and cardiac abnormalities (45%). Overall, 35% of patients showed large-vessel vasculitis coronary vasculitis (26%) and coronary aneurysm (19%). Treatment was mostly intravenous immunoglobulins (79%) and aspirin (81%). Four patients showed myocardial infarction due to coronary vasculitis, but none were treated with IVIg because of late diagnosis. After a median follow-up of 5 months (range 1-117), persistent aneurysm was noted in 9% of cases. Damage was significantly lower with early treatment than late or no treatment (p=0.01). CONCLUSION: Given the high frequency of cardiac involvement and complications in this series of AKD, diagnosis and treatment should not be delayed, and early IVIg treatment seems to improve the outcome.