Thinking about this evokes several memories. The pediatric immunologist who has been one of the leading authorities on KD, Stan Shulman, and I shared lab space when I began my academic career at the University of Florida a long time ago; we and our families became good friends. I’m proud of and happy for Stan’s distinguished career. My failure to definitively diagnose adult KD reminds me, too, of similar prior experiences. My lab identified important effects of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs on in vitro and in vivo mononuclear cell function when I was a young investigator, and I wasn’t experienced enough then to confidently extrapolate the observations to perturbations of prostaglandin-mediated effects. We also described silicone-related rheumatologic syndromes, in error in retrospect, as did others. We also reported “Rheumatic syndromes presenting with ischemic vasculopathy of the extremities” (Clin Res. 1981;29: 851A), not recognizing these patients as having the antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, described years later, that they undoubtedly did. My mom would have loved a “Panush’s syndrome”; she was disappointed each year they announced the Nobel prizes and my name was never among the awardees.
Dr. Panush is professor of medicine, division of rheumatology, department of medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
