A 10-year retrospective comparative analysis of the clinical features of brucellosis in children and adults

Abstract

Introduction: Brucellosis is a zoonosis with a wide spectrum of clinical manifestations. However, it is still unclear whether the clinical manifestations in children are significantly different from those in adults.
 Methodology: Patients with brucellosis and treated at the General Hospital of Ningxia Medical University between 2009 and 2019 were divided into two groups; children (88) and adults (354). Thereafter, the records of the two groups were analyzed retrospectively.
 Results: The findings showed that: 1. School-age children, young and middle-aged individuals were more likely to suffer from brucellosis and most were male; 2. Fever and arthralgia were the most common manifestations in the two groups. In addition, fatigue and low back pain were rare in children although fever and lymphadenopathy were more common in this group. However, hepatomegaly and splenomegaly were common in both groups; 3. The most common complication was osteoarthritis and peripheral arthritis occurred more frequently in children. On the other hand, spondylitis was the most common in adults (this particularly involved the lumbar and sacral vertebrae); 4. An increase in the erythrocyte sedimentation rate, levels of the C-reactive protein and liver enzymes was common in both two groups; 5. There was no significant difference in the positive rate of the standard agglutination test between children (96.59%) and adults (95.20%). However, the positive rate of blood culture was higher in children (65.85%) than in adults (51.00%).
 Conclusions: Brucellosis causes damage to multiple systems and differences in clinical characteristics were found between children and adults.

Clinicoepidemiological findings of childhood brucellosis in a tertiary care center in Central Anatolia: with the emphasis of hematological findings

“…The authors demonstrated that fever was the most comon symptom in both children and adults (82.9% vs 61.5%, respectively), followed by joint pain, fatigue, anorexia and low back pain. 10 In our study, as reported in previous studies, the most common symptoms were arthralgia and fever and the most common physical examination findings were hepatomegaly and arthritis.…”

“…9 It has been reported that brucellosis often affects children aged 5 to 15 years of age in different pediatric studies. 1,10,11 A study conducted on 496 children with brucellosis in Eastern Turkey, showed that patients' age ranged from 1-16 years with a mean age of 10.0±3.95 years. Half of the children were over 10 years of age and the male/female ratio was 1.5.…”

“…Turk J Pediatr 2022; 64 (1): [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] The Turkish Journal of Pediatrics ▪ January-February 2022 Turk J Pediatr 2022; 64 (1): [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] The Turkish Journal of Pediatrics ▪ January-February 2022…”

“…Turk J Pediatr 2022; 64(1): [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] The Turkish Journal of Pediatrics ▪ January-February 2022…”

Brucellosis in childhood: retrospective evaluation of 37 cases and review of the literature

“…In 18 studies conducted in our country in 2011 and after, in which children aged <18 years were evaluated, the mean age ranged between 7.3-11.9 years (Table 2) [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. In the reports, male case rates are generally between 30-69.3% [25][26][27], in our country, apart from 3 studies reporting this rate as 45-46.8% [10,11,17], male predominance is observed with a rate of 54.4-75% in 15 studies (Table 2) [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”