Constrictive Pericarditis and Bilateral Pleural Effusions Unmasked in an HLA-B27 Positive Patient
Michael Villalonga, Astefanos Al-Dalakta, Joseph El Roumi, Muhammad Ehsan, Abdel Hadi El Hajjar, Chadi Tabaja, Allan L. Klein · 2026
Read Constrictive Pericarditis and Bilateral Pleural Effusions Unmasked in an HLA-B27 Positive Patient by Michael Villalonga, Astefanos Al-Dalakta, Joseph El Roumi, Muhammad Ehsan, Abdel Hadi El Hajjar, Chadi Tabaja, Allan L. Klein (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13571368.txt.
Description
Michael Villalonga and co-authors report, in a 2026 case, a 40-year-old previously healthy man whose heart sac slowly stiffened into constrictive pericarditis, squeezing the heart and causing fluid on both lungs. Symptoms began with a stubborn cough treated as bronchitis, then progressed to breathlessness, fever, and clear constriction on imaging over about eighteen months.
An extensive workup found only one clue: positivity for HLA-B27, a gene marker tied to inflammatory spine and joint diseases with known heart effects. Medicines failed, and removing the thickened sac resolved his symptoms, with tissue confirming fibrous disease. The authors propose the marker as a possible predisposing factor worth studying.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Michael Villalonga, Astefanos Al-Dalakta, Joseph El Roumi, Muhammad Ehsan, Abdel Hadi El Hajjar, Chadi Tabaja, Allan L. Klein |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 17663 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |