Premenstrual Fever

To the Editor:—  Some interesting questions are raised by the letter from Dr. William Nussbaum in The Journal (174:1221 [Oct. 29] 1960). He describes a 45-year-old woman with attacks of premenstrual fever around 104° F. lasting for 12 to 24 hours. While it would, of course, be impossible from this description alone to make a diagnosis, two entities come to mind. The first is etiocholanalone fever, which has been described and elucidated by Dr. Philip Bondy at Yale Medical School (Transactions Association of American Physicians, in press). This illness is characterized by recurrent bouts of selflimited fever, during which a high concentration of etiocholanalone is present in the blood.The second illness suggested by Dr. Nussbaum's letter is described under the title of "Familial Mediterranean Fever" (Heller, H., Sohar, E., and Sherf, L., Arch Intern Med102:50-71 [July] 1958) although both this disease and etiocholanalone fever have been