A ring of purple bruising around both eyes usually points to a blow to the head. For a 60-year-old woman in Turkey, there was no blow at all. The bruises kept coming back, and they were the only outward sign of AL amyloidosis, a rare disease in which misfolded proteins collect in tissues and can make small blood vessels fragile enough to bleed under the skin.
Hematologists at Ege University in İzmir described her case in a case report published online in August 2026 in the journal Transfusion and Apheresis Science. The authors, Selin Kır, Filiz Vural and Nur Soyer, found that the disease behind her bruising was being driven by a surprisingly small group of abnormal blood cells.
