[Whipple's disease and tuberculosis. A previously unreported association]

Abstract

Whipple's disease and pulmonary and lymph node tuberculosis have been diagnosed in a 70 year-old man hospitalized for weight loss and fever. The tuberculous or Whipple's disease-related nature of associated non-necrotizing epithelioid hepatic granulomas could not be determined. The existence of cellular immune defects in Whipple's disease could explain the association with tuberculosis, which has not been previously reported in the literature.