Background: Saudi Literature showed a shortage of recent data about pediatric brucellosis, particularly those concerned with the susceptibility of brucella isolates to antibiotics. Objectives: This study aimed to describe the demographic, seasonal, and clinical and laboratory manifestations of pediatric brucellosis and to determine brucella isolates susceptibility to antibiotics. Methods: A retrospective study was conducted at Prince Sultan Military Medical Center (PSMMC), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia over ten years from 2007 to 2016. The study extracted data from the medical records of 81 children with brucellosis (65 males and 16 females). The data were collected by a well-developed data collection sheet. The sheet included socio-demographic data (age, sex, and nationality), as well as seasonal, clinical, and laboratory data. The collected data were analyzed using appropriate statistical methods. Results: The mean age of the studied children were 8.2 ± 3.9 years, with 80.3% of them were males. Marked seasonal variation was detected all over the study years with the highest incidence was in the summer and autumn seasons. Fever and arthralgia were the most common presenting symptoms accounting for 83.9% and 48.1% of the studied cases, respectively. Anemia and leucopenia were found in about one-fourth of patients, while leukocytosis was found in only 8.7%. Liver dysfunction was also found in some patients with hyperbilirubinemia was the most predominant (98.5%). More than 70% of cases had an initial serology titer of 1/20480, and 8 patients (10.7%) have had a titer of > 1/640. Brucella isolates resistance was the highest to trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, with 27 isolates (33.3%) were resistant. For rifampicin, 8 of the tested 75 isolates (10.7%) were resistant. Conclusions: Continued efforts including surveillance and recording of full data of newly diagnosed cases should be warranted. Further pediatric studies are needed.
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