Suspected case of lipoedema in Japanese woman with a characteristic histology in skin biopsy

Description

A 42-year-old Japanese woman with a body mass index of 42, presented with a long history of bilateral swelling of buttocks and lower extremities. The upper trunk, upper extremities and feet were spared of excessive fat deposition without a complete loss of adipose tissues (figure 1), lowering the likelihood of partial lipodystrophy. Physical examination revealed that the edema was dry, hard and non-pitting. Stemmer's sign was negative, and five out of seven criteria for the diagnosis of lipoedema1 were met. A CT scan showed massive circumferential enlargement of subcutaneous tissues with the same CT value as fat, further suggesting the diagnosis of lipoedema (figure 1). Other conditions causing lower-extremity swelling or fat excess were excluded. We performed skin punch biopsy of the right hip (figure 2). Chief pathological findings were as follows: (1) the size of adipocytes was generally...

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