Korean J Clin Microbiol.
2002 Sep;5(2):151-154.
A Case Report of Invasive Infection due to Trichosporon beigelii in a Patient with Acute Leukemia
- Affiliations
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- 1Department of Laboratory Medicine, Chonbuk National University Medical School, Korea. leehs@moak.chonbuk.ac.kr
- 2Institute for Medical Sciences, Chonju, Korea.
Abstract
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Systemic infection due to Trichosporon beigelii is uncommon but increasingly reported in immunocompromised patients. Trichosporonosis is often refractory to conventional antifungal therapy and frequently fatal. We report a case of systemic T. beigelii infection in a patient with acute leukemia. The 35-year-old male patient had been diagnosed as acute myelogenous leukemia with severe neutropenia and received cytotoxic drug therapy. As a fever developed on the day 21 of chemotherapy, broad spectrum antibiotics were administered empirically. Even though an antifungal drug, amphotericin B was replaced because the blood cultures resulted in T. beigelii, the patient died of the septic shock. We think that T. beigelii should be included as a potential life-threatening pathogen capable of causing widespread systemic disease in the immunocompromised host.