Clinical characteristics of 72 patients with brucellosis / 中华地方病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To analyze and review clinical characteristics of brucellosis and improve awareness of brucellosis and level of diagnosis.Methods Totally 72 in-patients treated for brucellosis from March 2012 to June 2015 in Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University were retrospectively analyzed for epidemiology,clinical feature,laboratory data,treatment and prognosis.Results A total of 72 cases were confirmed and included.Thirty seven patients (51.39％) had definitely contact history with raw meat or progeny and 3 (4.17％) with brucellosis patients.The common clinical presentations included persistent fever (100.00 ％,72/72),followed by headache (87.50％,63/72),chills (48.61％,35/72),muscle-joint pain (47.22％,34/72) and cough (43.06％,31/72).The laboratory test showed there were 14 patients (19.44％,14/72) with decreased leukopenia,49 patients (68.06％,49/72) with elevated C-reactive protein and 46 patients (63.89％,46/72) with elevated procalcitonin.Abnormal liver function showed elevated alanine aminotransferase (69.44％,50/72),aspartate aminotransferase (66.67％,48/72) and alkaline phosphatase (61.11％,44/72) with proportions.The mainly abnormal imaging features showed hepatomegaly,splenomegaly,lymphadenopathy,pulmonary infiltrating and nodules.Sixty-five patients (90.28％) had positive blood culture and 13 cases (18.06％) had positive marrow culture.Seventy-two patients were cured after active medical treatment and no recurrence after 1 year of follow-up.Conclusions Brucellosis is a invasive infectious disease with many systemic involvements,whose clinical symptoms are not typical.For those patients with long-term fever of unknown origin and poor effect anti-infection treatment,especially complicated with multi-system damage hepatomegaly,splenomegaly,lymphadenopathy,brucellosis should be suspected and be treated early.