Lemierre Syndrome: Report of a Case with an Innovative Diagnostic Method and Literature Review

Objective: To understand the clinical features, diagnosis and treatment of Lemierre syndrome (LS), a high-risk and low-prevalence infectious disease.

Methods: We present the severe LS case that was diagnosed using metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) in our hospital, and systematically summarized the diagnosis and treatment strategies of patients that reported LS from 2006 to 2022.

Results: The 24-year-old patient in our hospital suffered from cranial nerve paralysis, a neurological complication rarely seen in LS cases. The causative agent (Fusobacterium necrophorum, Fn) of this patient was only detected by mNGS tests, and the reads number of Fn detected by plasma mNGS tests was decrease as the patients gradually improved, indicating plasma mNGS is valuable in monitoring treatment efficacy. Although most of the cases retrieved from the literature showed typical symptoms, such as a history of sore throat, septic emboli, and internal jugular vein thrombosis, clinical manifestations were still relatively heterogeneous (eg, diversity of predisposing factors and pathogens, differences in pulmonary imaging features).

Conclusion: We summarized the clinical presentation, diagnosis, treatment, and regression of 17 symptomatic cases reported LS to provide clinicians with knowledge about this rare but fatal disease. mNGS assays should be considered as early as possible to identify the responsible pathogens for acute and critically ill patients with suspected infections in order to implement accurate and effective treatment.