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About Sarcoidosis
Once thought rare, sarcoidosis is common and affects people worldwide. This disease can affect people of any age, race, and gender. However, it is most common among adults between the ages of 20 and 40, and in certain ethnic groups.
Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease that can affect almost any organ in the body. It causes heightened immunity, which means that a person's immune system, which normally protects the body from infection and disease, overreacts, resulting in damage to the body's own tissues.
Sarcoidosis is often serious and can be life-threatening. The cause remains unknown and there is no cure. Research suggests that bacteria, viruses, or chemicals might trigger the disease.
Although such triggers might not bother most people, it is possible that someone with the right genetic predisposition may provoke the immune system to develop inflammation associated with sarcoidosis.
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Researchers estimate that cardiac sarcoidosis, affects more than 10% of people with sarcoidosis in the United States, and perhaps as many as 25%. Sarcoidosis can cause the heart to beat weakly resulting in shortness of breath and swelling in the legs. It can also cause palpitations (irregular heartbeat).
From 5% to 13% of patients have neurologic disease. Symptoms can include headaches, visual problems, weakness, or numbness of an arm or leg and facial palsy.
One in four (25%) patients will have skin involvement. Painful or red, raised bumps on the legs or arms (called erythema nodosum), discoloration of the nose, cheeks, lips and ears (called lupus pernio) or small brownish and painless skin patches are symptoms of the cutaneous form of the disease.
Joint pain occurs in about 33% of patients. Other symptoms include a mass in the muscle, muscle weakness and arthritis in the joints of the ankles, knees, elbows, wrists, hands, and feet.
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The classic features are the formation of granulomas, microscopic clumps of inflammatory cells that group together.
When too many of these clumps form in an organ they can interfere with how that organ functions. Sarcoidosis is a multi-system disorder and symptoms typically depend on which organ the disease affects, most often the disease will affect the lungs.
General Facts
About one third of patients will experience non-specific symptoms of fever, fatigue, weight loss, night sweats, and an overall feeling of malaise (or ill health).
The lungs are affected in more than 90% of patients with sarcoidosis. A cough that does not go away, shortness of breath, particularly with exertion and chest pain occur most frequently with the pulmonary form of the disease.
Up to 90% of sarcoidosis patients have enlarged lymph nodes. Most often they are in the neck, but those under the chin, in the armpits, and in the groin can be affected. The spleen, which is part of the lymphatic system, can also be affected.
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Although between 50% to 80% of patients with sarcoidosis will have granulomas in their liver, most are without symptoms and do not require treatment.
Any part of the eye can be affected by sarcoidosis and about 25% of patients have ocular involvement. Common symptoms include: burning, itching, tearing, pain, red eye, sensitivity to light (photophobia), dryness, seeing black spots (called floaters), and blurred vision. Chronic uveitis (inflammation of the membranes or uvea of the eye) can lead to glaucoma, cataracts, and blindness.
About 5% of patients will have involvement in the sinuses with symptoms that can include sinusitis, hoarseness, or shortness of breath.
Rarely, the gastrointestinal tract, reproductive organs, salivary glands, and the kidneys are affected.
Diagnosis
Sarcoidosis may be diagnosed by excluding similar diseases. Frequently, sarcoidosis is diagnosed once a routine chest x-ray shows an abnormality. To accurately diagnose the disease, most doctors will take a medical history and perform a physical examination, chest x-rays, breathing tests, and biopsy.
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