A 69-year-old woman had black, tarry stools, diarrhea that would not stop, and sepsis that kept coming back. When gastroenterologists in Melbourne, Australia, looked inside her upper digestive tract, the lining of her duodenum resembled snakeskin. That pattern led them to light chain deposition disease, a rare blood-protein disorder that seldom shows up in the gut.
The case was published Sept. 28, 2026, in ACG Case Reports Journal, a peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Gastroenterology. The authors, a seven-member team led by Angela Zhu in the Department of Gastroenterology at The Royal Melbourne Hospital, put a warning in their title: "Beware of the Snakeskin Duodenum."
