This study reviewed the clinical, laboratory, therapeutic and prognostic data on genitourinary involvement of brucellosis in this largest case series reported. This multicentre study pooled adult patients with genitourinary brucellar involvement from 34 centres treated between 2000 and 2013. Diagnosis of the disease was established by conventional methods. Overall 390 patients with genitourinary brucellosis (352 male, 90.2%) were pooled. In male patients, the most frequent involved site was the scrotal area (n=327, 83.8%), as epididymo-orchitis (n=204, 58%), orchitis (n=112, 31.8%) and epididymitis (n=11, 3.1%). In female patients, pyelonephritis (n=33/38, 86.8%) was significantly higher than in male patients (n=11/352, 3.1%; p<0.0001). The mean blood leukocyte count was 7530±3115/mm3. Routine laboratory analysis revealed mild to moderate increases for erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and C-reactive protein (CRP). The mean treatment duration and length of hospital stay were significantly higher when there were additional brucellar foci (p<0.05). Surgical operations including orchiectomy and abscess drainage were performed in nine (2.3%) patients. Therapeutic failure was detected in six (1.5%), relapse occurred in four (1%), and persistent infertility related to brucellosis occurred in one patient. A localized scrotal infection in men or pyelonephritis in women in the absence of leucocytosis and with mild to moderate increases in inflammatory markers should signal the possibility of brucellar genitourinary disease.
An outbreak of trichinellosis occurred in Izmir, Turkey, between January and March 2004. The outbreak was caused by the consumption of raw meat balls made of beef deceptively mixed with pork infected with Trichinella britovi. A total of 1098 people who had consumed this food either in 14 restaurants or from the street vendors located in three different neighbourhoods, consulted six different healthcare centres with a wide range of clinical signs and symptoms. Of them, 418 (38.1%) patients fulfilled the criteria for the diagnosis of acute trichinellosis. The most commonly observed signs and symptoms were myalgia (89.2%), arthralgia (69.9%) and eyelid (67%) and facial oedema (65.8%). High levels of creatinine kinase (69.3%) and lactate dehydrogenase (93.8%) with leucocytosis (>10 000/mm(3), 58.9%) and eosinophilia (>1000/mm(3), 60.5%) were the most prominent laboratory findings. All, but 13 of these patients were treated with mebendazole or albendazole. Based on the physicians' assessments of disease severity, 78 (19%) patients were additionally given prednisolone in whom a significantly more rapid recovery of clinical signs and symptoms (e.g. fever, myalgia, facial and eyelid oedema) was observed, with a rapid improvement in leucocytosis, eosinophilia and muscle enzymes, compared with those, who had not received corticosteroids (P < 0.05). Beef illegally mixed with pork of unknown origin, by a wholesale butcher who had sold this product to restaurants and street vendors at a lower price than the prevailing market price of beef, was the cause of this large-scale outbreak in a country with a predominantly Muslim population.
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