Brucellosis causing bone marrow aplasia in an 11-year-old patient with complete recovery after treatment

Nour Youssef; Yolla Youssef; Dolly Noun; Miguel Abboud; Ghassan Dbaibo

doi:10.1016/j.idcr.2022.e01531

Brucellosis causing bone marrow aplasia in an 11-year-old patient with complete recovery after treatment

IDCases. 2022 Jun 15:29:e01531. doi: 10.1016/j.idcr.2022.e01531. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Nour Youssef^{1

2

3}, Yolla Youssef^{1

2

3}, Dolly Noun¹, Miguel Abboud¹, Ghassan Dbaibo^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, American University of Beirut Medical Center, Beirut, Lebanon.
² Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Lebanon.
³ Center for Infectious Diseases Research, American University of Beirut Medical Center, Beirut, Lebanon.

Abstract

Brucellosis is one of the most prevalent zoonotic infections in the Middle East. The disease may present with a range of symptoms from a simple febrile illness to severe invasive infections affecting different organ systems (meningitis, osteomyelitis). In this paper we present an eleven-year-old girl who was diagnosed with "idiopathic bone marrow aplasia" and planned for hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT), when pre-transplant work-up showed high brucella titers. The patient was started on doxycycline, rifampin and gentamicin initially, with discontinuation of the latter 3 weeks into therapy. She recovered completely after 8 months of treatment.

Keywords: Aplastic anemia; Brucellosis; Pancytopenia; Zoonotic infections.

Publication types

Case Reports