Abstract
Background: Cerebral toxoplasmosis infection presents with non-specific neurologic symptoms in immunocompromised patients. With lack of measurable adaptive immune responses and reluctance to sample affected brain tissue, expedient diagnosis to guide directed treatment is often delayed. Case presentation: We describe the use of cerebrospinal fluid polymerase chain reaction and plasma cell-free DNA technologies to supplement neuroimaging in the diagnosis of cerebral toxoplasmosis in an immunocompromised pediatric patient following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation for idiopathic severe aplastic anemia. Successful cerebral toxoplasmosis treatment included antibiotic therapy for 1 year following restoration of cellular immunity with an allogeneic stem cell boost. Conclusions: Plasma cell-free DNA technology provides a non-invasive method of rapid diagnosis, improving the likelihood of survival from often lethal opportunistic infection in a high risk, immunocompromised patient population.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 941 |
| Journal | BMC infectious diseases |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Grants KL2TR002492, funding research effort for CLE. The content is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences which had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation or writing of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Keywords
- Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation
- Case report
- Cell-free DNA
- Immune mediated cytopenia
- Severe aplastic anemia
- Toxoplasmosis
