Familial perinatal hemochromatosis: a disease that causes recurrent non-immune hydrops.

Perinatal hemochromatosis is a rare disorder with an enormous iron overload in the parenchymal organs, especially the liver, pancreas, heart and endocrine glands. Elements of the reticuloendothelial system are relatively spared. The clinical course is rapidly progressive and the disease is invariably fatal. Several siblings are described in the literature. Herein, we describe one pair of full siblings affected by the disease, wherein the clinical presentation was hydrops. We suggest that hemochromatosis should be considered in the differential diagnosis of hydrops fetalis.