Whipple's Disease — Past, Present, and Future

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Abstract
Knowledge of Whipple's disease started with Whipple's report in 1907 of a medical missionary with an illness that had begun five years earlier with episodes of arthritis but that subsequently included weight loss, cough, fever, diarrhea, hypotension, abdominal swelling, increased skin pigmentation, and severe anemia.1 Findings at autopsy consisted of polyserositis, aortic-valve lesions, and prominent deposition of fat within intestinal mucosa and mesenteric lymph nodes, with marked infiltration by foamy macrophages. The pattern of fat deposition suggested that this disorder was an obscure disease of fat metabolism, and Whipple proposed the name “intestinal lipodystrophy.”Whipple's description represents the ideal single . . .