[Still disease in subSaharan Africa: report of four cases in Gabon].

Abstract

Still disease is an inflammatory rheumatism occurring predominantly in children and adolescents, but which is sometimes diagnosed in adults. A combination of fever, arthralgia, transient dermatological lesions, hyperleucocytosis predominantly neutrophilic, and ferritinaemia greater than 1,000 μg/L is suggestive of this disease, but infectious, haematological, immunological, and tumor diseases must first be ruled out. Accordingly, patients' financial limitations keep this disease from being diagnosed often in sub-Saharan Africa. We report four cases of Still disease with favourable outcome after corticosteroid therapy.