Acute Brucellosis Presenting with Bleeding Tendency due to Isolated Severe Thrombocytopenia

Mild anemia and leukopenia are the most common hematologic findings in the course of acute brucellosis. Severe form of thrombocytopenia is less frequently reported. We describe a case of acute brucellosis in a 20-year-old man, who presented with fever, purpuric skin lesions, epistaxis, and hematuria. The absolute platelet count was 2 × 109/L. The patient was diagnosed as suffering from brucellosis on the basis of a strongly positive serologic reaction and was treated with antibiotics and a short course of corticosteroids, with a rapid rise in platelet count. Brucella infection can cause immune-mediated thrombocytopenia that is reversible after appropriate antimicrobial therapy and steroid treatment.

Listeria monocytogenes as the possible cause of the spontanous abortion in female of the fertile age

Listeria monocytogenes is a Gram-positive, weakly pathogenic bacterium able to grow also at the temperature of 40 degrees C. A man most often gets affected by consuming contaminated food and water. Animals can carry bacteria although they have not to appear ill, then their meat and milk products are the source of infection of human being. The disease most often attacks with the weak immune system, newborns and pregnant women. That what is significant, listeria penetrates through the placenta and can lead to the fatal infection, which is characteristic by disseminated granulomatosis lesions of a newborn and micro abscess on the placenta. In a newborn can provoke the sepsis with the mortality of 50%. By the examination are encircled two groups of the reproductive age-totally 60. From these 30 had one or more spontaneous abortion, and 30 had no spontaneous abortion. By the serologic reaction the agglutination is discovered the presence of the antibodies in serum of the. The positive serologic answer was found in the first group in 18 (60%) and in that another group in 8 participants (26, 70%).

An Evaluation of clinical, serologic, anatomopathologic and immunohistochemical findings for fifteen patients with mucosal leishmaniasis before and after treatment

Treatment of mucosal leishmaniasis (ML) can be controlled by clinical examination and by serologic titers by the indirect immunofluorescence serologic reaction (IISR). We studied the correlation between the presence of antigen in tissue determined by immunohistochemistry, the IISR titers and the anatomopathologic findings in fifteen patients with ML before and after healing of the lesions as determined by otorhinolaryngologic evaluation, and evaluated these parameters to determine which of them could be useful during follow-up. Tissue antigens became negative in four patients (group A) after treatment, with a statistically significant reduction or negativity of IISR titers (p<0.05). This did not occur in patients in whom the antigen persisted after treatment (group B), suggesting that serologic follow-up should be performed together with the search for tissue antigen, a combination which, to our knowledge, has not been used in previous studies. The negativity of tissue antigens and the behavior of IIRS titers in group A patients probably indicate a lower possibility of recurrence. Upon anatomopathologic examination the inflammatory process was found to persist after treatment even in group A, suggesting that the permanence of inflammatory activity even in clinically healed lesions is possibly correlated with the presence of the antigen or of some unknown factor.

An Outbreak of Nosocomial Salmonella typhimurium Infection Linked to Environmental Reservoir

Between May 16 and July 1,1973, four definite cases and one possible case of clinical salmonellosis occurred in a 175-bed community hospital; there were no deaths. Three of the four patients with definite salmonellosis had had cholecystectomies done by the same general surgeon (A); the fourth was an intensive care unit nurse who cared for one of the ill patients during the diarrheal phase of illness before salmonellosis was diagnosed. Epidemiologic investigation implicated the plastic tubing of an intermittent-suction machine located in the recovery room as the environmental reservoir of the organism, and having a nasogastric tube in place postoperatively was the critical host factor related to illness. The salmonella organisms isolated from the suction machine tubing were identical in serologic reaction, biochemical test results, and bacteriophage susceptibility pattern to those recovered from the four patients with confirmed salmonellosis. Antimicrobial susceptibility patterns were similar but not identical.

Risk Factors in Multiple Carcinomas of the Lip

Certain risk factors appear to separate subjects with repeated primary carcinomas of the lip from the general population of patients with carcinoma of the lip. Factors that were found statistically significant in increasing the chance of recurrent carcinoma of the lip include outdoor occupations requiring prolonged exposure to sunlight or the use of tobacco on a regular basis. Significant risk factors of a clinical nature include a positive serologic reaction for syphilis; the presence of leukoplakia, hyperkeratosis, or actinic cheilitis; or the presence of a basal cell or squamous cell carcinoma of the facial skin.