Urinary porphyrinogens in normal subjects and in patients with porphyria cutanea tarda and acute intermittent porphyria.
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OBJECTIVES: To assess the association between acute intermittent porphyria (AIP), hypertension and renal disease. DESIGN: A population-based matched case-control study (1:4) in 50 AIP patients (manifest/latent 25/25), a retrospective study of all individuals who died between the years 1978 and 1990 (2122 including 33 with AIP) and a group of eight patients with severe AIP. RESULTS: Hypertension was found in 56% of patients with manifest AIP, 33% of their controls (P = 0.041) and 16% of patients with latent AIP (P = 0.004). Renal disease was not more common in patients with AIP than in their controls. Three of the eight patients with severe recurrent AIP had impaired renal function, caused in one by systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) nephritis. In the other two, no cause other than AIP could be found. In the mortality study, hypertension was registered in 68% of patients with manifest AIP compared to 21% of those with latent AIP (P = 0.008) but death from myocardial infarction and stroke was not more common. Uraemia was cited as the cause of death in 9.1% of AIP patients and 1.0% of those without AIP (P = 0.006). CONCLUSIONS: Hypertension is more common in patients with manifest AIP than in those with latent AIP or control subjects. Renal disease may be due to hypertension, to AIP or to SLE. AIP may predispose to other renal diseases.
Acute intermittent porphyria (AIP) is the most common of the four forms of neuroporphyria. AIP mimics a variety of disorders and thus poses a diagnostic quagmire. Abdominal pain occurs in 90-95% of the attacks. Some patients develop psychiatric symptoms such as psychosis similar to schizophrenia. The diagnostic difficulty may lead to under-diagnosis of patients who present with strictly psychiatric symptoms. This assumption is supported by a high prevalence of AIP in psychiatric hospitals. Therefore, we encourage a high index of suspicion for AIP in psychiatric patients in order to prevent false psychiatric diagnosis. In addition we discuss psychotropic drugs that may exacerbate acute attacks in undiagnosed patients. We report a case in which the diagnosis of AIP was clouded by the presence of only psychiatric symptoms. The clue for diagnosis was an anamnestic detail of the use of a porphyrogenic drug prior to the admission. The diagnosis of AIP was supported by excess of alpha aminolevulinic acid (ALA) and porphobilinogen (PBG) in urine concomitantly with a decrease in porphobilinogen deaminase (PBGD) activity in erythrocytes. The diagnosis was further strengthened by the fact that the patient's father was identified as an AIP carrier. However, in the absence of typical organic symptoms of porphyria, one cannot definitely rule out the presence of schizophrenia in this patient in addition to AIR
BACKGROUND: Diagnosis of an attack of acute intermittent porphyria (AIP) is based on the demonstration of increased concentrations of porphobilinogen (PBG) and delta-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) in urine, but many AIP patients also have high baseline concentrations in remission. The aim of this study was to estimate the biological variations of ALA, PBG, and porphyrins in healthy individuals and AIP patients to improve interpretation of test results. METHODS: Fifteen healthy individuals and 15 AIP patients were included, and biological variations were calculated based on urine samples collected weekly for 10 consecutive weeks. For the AIP patients, long-term variations were also estimated based on 7 samples collected through a 2-year period. RESULTS: The porphyrin variances were inhomogeneously distributed; biological variations of porphyrins were therefore not calculated. The within-subject biological variations of ALA and PBG were 16%-20% in the short-term settings and for PBG, 25% in the long-term setting, giving reference change values of approximately 50% and 70%, respectively. The probability of detecting a 100% real change in PBG was 97% in the short-term setting and 80% in the long-term setting. CONCLUSIONS: In an AIP patient, a 2-fold increase in PBG, independent of the baseline concentration, will be detected with a probability >80% and is most likely related to the patient's disease and not caused only by analytical and biological variation. When PBG is used in the assessment of AIP-related symptoms, both the PBG concentration in remission and the length of time since the previous sample must be considered.
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Patients with acute intermittent porphyria can be subdivided into three groups, according to the porphobilinogen deaminase activity in their erythrocytes. The first group has lowered, the second overlapping and the third normal porphobilinogen deaminase activity. Of 385 acute intermittent porphyria patients 5% had normal porphobilinogen deaminase activity. Gene carriers of acute intermittent porphyria, which have normal porphobilinogen deaminase activity but display slight, moderate or high aberrations of excretion, are recognized by analysis of urinary haem precursors and faecal porphyrins. Six individuals suffering from acute intermittent porphyria were detected in three families with normal porphobilinogen deaminase. There were no differences in the latent and clinical phases of acute intermittent porphyria between patients with lowered and those with normal porphobilinogen deaminase. One female with normal activity in erythrocytes, in which the porphyria disease process is triggered by barbiturates and carbamazepine, is presented. After therapy with high doses of glucose and omission of inducing agents, this woman was free of symptoms, and the excretion of different urinary porphyrin precursors and porphyrins decreased by between 65 and 93%.
Autonomic function was assessed in subjects with acute intermittent porphyria and age- and sex-matched controls using five different bedside tests of cardiovascular reflexes. During the acute attack both parasympathetic and sympathetic tests were impaired, but subsequently improved during remission. Early parasympathetic dysfunction was also detected during remission and in latent asymptomatic acute intermittent porphyria.
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A group of 40 female patients with acute intermittent porphyria from 5 to 34 years after attacks of porphyria were examined. In two patients arterial hypertension developed before attack. In 18 cases hypertension was observed in different periods of time after attack. The comparison of these findings with epidemiological data of similar group of the Polish population suggests that arterial hypertension develops earlier and more frequently in female patients with acute intermittent porphyria. Periodic control of blood pressure in patients with acute intermittent porphyria is proposed.