Annals of Clinical Microbiology, The official Journal of the Korean Society of Clinical Microbiology

A Case Report of Invasive Infection due to Trichosporon beigelii in a Patient with Acute Leukemia

Case report

Annals of Clinical Microbiology (Ann Clin Microbiol) 2002 December Volume 5, Issue 2, pages 151-154.

A Case Report of Invasive Infection due to Trichosporon beigelii in a Patient with Acute Leukemia

Hyun Lim, Dal Sik Kim, Hye Soo Lee, and Sam Im Choi

Department of Laboratory Medicine, Chonbuk National University Medical School, and Institute for Medical Sciences, Chonju, Korea

Abstract

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. (Korean J Clin Microbiol 2002;5:151-154)

Keywords

Trichosporon beigelii, Acute leukemia, Immunocompromised