Low-Fat Diet in Familial Mediterranean Fever

Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) is a genetic disorder with complete autosomal recessive inheritance. It is prevalent in peoples of Mediterranean stock, particularly Sephardi Jews and Armenians.1,2The disease is manifested by 2 independent phenotypic characters due to the same presumed inborn error of metabolism: (1) attacks of fever accompanied by pain in the abdomen, chest, skin or joints, usually appearing in childhood or adolescence and recurring at irregular intervals throughout life; (2) amyloidosis, causing death, at an early age, due to renal failure.3 The only factor which is known to have produced remission from attacks with a high degree of consistency is pregnancy.1Since no uniformly successful therapeutic measure has been made available to date, the report of Mellinkoff et al.4as to the efficacy of low-fat diet in 8 cases is of special interest. A therapeutic trial in a large series of cases was embarked