An Old Autopsy Report Sheds Light on a “New” Disease: Infantile Polyarteritis Nodosa and Kawasaki Disease

Although Kawasaki disease (KD) was first discovered and identified in Japan by Kawasaki in the 1960s, fatal KD cases resulting from coronary artery aneurysms had been identified retrospectively in the West as early as 1871. Kawasaki initially postulated that this disease was a new, as yet unidentified, self-limiting illness with no fatal coronary sequelae. The connection between fatal cases, then diagnosed as infantile polyarteritis nodosa, was not made until the late 1970s. Kawasaki’s thoughts were reinforced by an apparent absence of nonfatal cases in the West before 1967. Close examination of a 1948 autopsy report suggests that nonfatal cases of KD did indeed exist, at least in the United States, before its emergence in Japan in the early 1950s. These nonfatal cases of KD were misdiagnosed as Stevens-Johnson syndrome. The autopsy report reviewed in this article reinforces the likelihood that KD did occur in the United States before it was identified as Kawasaki disease in Japan.