Diseases associated with CPPD deposition disease

The study of the different diseases that may be found in association with nonfamilial CPPD deposition disease, as for example hypophosphatasia (l), may give important clues as to its pathogenesis as well as throwing new light on such a common associated disease as osteoarthritis.It should also alert the clinician to hitherto unrecognized and treatable disorders like hyperparathyroidism (2-4) and hemochromatosis (5-7).The list of possible associations is ever increasing.The difficulty lies in finding out which if any of them are meaningful or true associations, and not attributing to them a causal role.The task is not made easier by the knowledge that chondrocalcinosis is a frequent finding in the elderly; the incidence in different radiologic series varies from 7 to 27% (8,9).Furthermore, the conditions most frequently encountered such as osteoarthritis, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and atherosclerosis are common in. the group in question, which in the largest reported series had a mean age of 72 years (10).The disease associations in these 238 cases included diabetes mellitus 40-60%, hypertension 254096, atherosclerosis 35-50%, azotemia 34%, hyperuricemia 3496, gynecomastia 7% of the 142 males, hyperparathyroidism 7.2% with parathyroid adenomas removed from 17 cases, renal stones 7.58, classic gout with crystal identification 5% hemochromatosis none, hyperthyroidism 3%, in-