Brucella agglutination titre in the population of Qatar

In order to determine the brucella agglutination titre of significance to diagnose brucellosis, standard tube brucella agglutination was done on 289 healthy blood donors and patients who have non febrile chronic diseases. Brucella agglutination titre of 29 patients with positive blood culture for Brucella was recorded. Three per cent of the population who have no clinical evidence of brucellosis have a titre of 1:640 or less. A titre of equal or greater than [1:1280] is probably as good as blood culture

Methanol poisoning from cologne ingestion

Over a period of 3 years 25 cases of methanol poisoning were treated in our hospital The source of the poisoning was identified as a cheap eau de cologne which contained 17.4g/l methanol and which had been drunk as a substitute for ethanol. The patients were treated according to our standard protocol. The mortality rate was 56%, blindness occurred in 16% and 28% survived without sequelae