Ever heard of CAPS? It’s not a hat or a Washington D.C. based hockey team; it’s a group of rare, inherited autoinflammatory diseases. CAPS, short for Cryopyrin-Associated Periodic Syndromes, is challenging to diagnose because symptoms are often similar to those of other disorders.
For example, a 14-month-old girl was initially hospitalized for eight days with a fever and rash. The doctors believed her symptoms to be urticaria or Kawasaki disease, but upon further examination and analysis, they were able to diagnosis it as a subcategory of CAPS. The point? The diagnosis process can be extensive because of symptoms that are similar to those in other rare diseases.
So, here’s what you need to know.
The three subtypes of CAPS are:
2. Neonatal-Onset Multisystem Inflammatory Disease (NOMID)
3. Familial Cold Autoinflammatory Syndrome (FCAS)
Here are some helpful pieces of information about this condition:
- To diagnose CAPS, doctors will use a combination of tests, including evaluation of symptoms and medical history, laboratory and genetic testing, and skin biopsy.
- CAPS are characterized by non-stop fevers and pain in muscles and skeleton. People living with Muckle-Wells syndrome deal with regular inflammatory episodes.
- Most CAPS patients have a mutation in NLRP3, which encodes cryopyrin.
Hopefully the next time CAPS comes up in conversation, you can add a little more than a Yankees’ Cap.
To read more information, check-out the National Center for Biotechnology Information page.
Share this info with your social networks to fill them in on exactly what CAPS is as well!
