GRANULOMATOUS HEPATITIS IN CENTRAL TUNISI A

Identifying the cause of granulomatous hepatitis Is a task of variable difficulty. The distribution of causes varies with many parameters in cluding the date of the study, the study population, and the method us ed to recruit tile study subjects, A retrospective study of 20 cases s een at the F. Hached Teaching Hospital in Sousse, Tunisia, showed that as many as 12 cases (60%) were due to infectious diseases, with tuber culosis being the cause in ten cases (50%), Q fever in one, and Medite rranean spotty fever in one. The second most common cause was Hodgkin' s or non Hodgkin's Lymphoma (4 cases, 20%). One case was due to Crohn' s disease. Efforts to identify a cause failed in the remaining three c ases (15%). These findings are comparable to those reported in the lit erature. However, two differences with studies from Europe and English -speaking countries were that tuberculosis was more common and that sa rcoidosis was not among the identified causes.