Regional migratory osteoporosis: case report of a patient with neuropathic pain

Regional migratory osteoporosis (RMO) is an idiopathic disorder characterized by severe periarticular pain, transient and migratory arthralgia, and osteoporosis. Osteoporosis in this disease may appear in the form of local regional osteoporosis and bone marrow edema or generalized osteoporosis. It occurs most commonly in middle-aged men and late second or third trimester pregnant women. The laboratory findings of the disease are usually normal and do not demonstrate apparent anomalies. The presence of bone marrow edema on MRI is its characteristic finding. RMO can only be separated from transient osteoporosis of hip and avascular necrosis with migration to other joints. Clinically, RMO progresses in three stages: increasing pain and disability, radiological findings (osteopenia), maximalization of symptoms, and finally, the regression of the disease and radiological changes. In this case report, we present a 29-year-old woman whose symptoms had first appeared at the second trimester of pregnancy and migrated both to the other joints in the proximo-distal direction and to the adjacent bones within the same joint. She also had symptoms such as hyperalgesia, hyperesthesia and hypertrichosis along with neuropathic pain, which she described as a burning, biting, and prickling type of pain at the right leg. The neuropathic pain of the patient was resistant to medical treatment. We believe that this case was worth reporting because of the obstinate clinical course of the patient’s disease and her severe neuropathic pain that was resistant to treatment.