Elevated bone resorption markers in a patient with hypercalcemia associated with post-partum thyrotoxicosis and hypoadrenocorticism due to pituitary failure.

A 36-yr-old woman began to suffer from headache, anorexia and general fatigue at 35 weeks' gestation. About 2 or 3 months after the delivery, fever, tachycardia and generalized musculoskeletal disorder appeared. Thereafter, they worsened rapidly, accompanied by a disturbance of consciousness and hypercalcemia. Thyrotoxicosis, due to a post-partum thyroiditis, and glucocorticoid deficiency, due to a pituitary failure, probably associated with lymphocytic hypophysitis, were also observed. All the symptoms and hypercalcemia disappeared after the glucocorticoid replacement therapy and the normalization of thyroid hormone levels. Serum and urinary bone resorption markers, such as urine pyridinoline (U-Pyr), urine deoxypyridinoline (U-DPD), urine amino-terminal telopeptide of type I collagen (U-NTx) and serum carboxy-terminal telopeptide of type I collagen (ICTP), were extremely high at the hypercalcemic state. In this case, they were 10 to 20 times higher than the normal upper limits, and then markedly decreased in a normocalcemic state, thereby showing an extreme acceleration of bone resorption in a state of both thyrotoxicosis and glucocorticoid deficiency.

[Analysis of utility of the phenotyping method on detection of cases infected by multiple strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)].

In this study, we compared the types of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolated from several foci of the same patient to find the incidence of multiple strain infection of MRSA in bacteremia cases. We will also evaluate the utility of the typing methods of phenotyping and genotyping for the above mentioned objective and judge the dissimilarity of clinical characteristics between the single strain infection and multiple strains infection. We studied 21 cases of MRSA bacteremia who were culture-positive both from blood and other foci in the same patient at Nagasaki University Hospital during 1990-1994. Clinical data were retrospectively collected from the patients' records. Phenotyping of all 113 MRSA isolates were done by coagulase typing (I-VIII), production of enterotoxins (SEA-SED) and toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1), hemolysis typing and antibiogram (MIC). In addition, typing of the same isolates were done by Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis (PFGE), using Gene Navigator System as the genotyping. Several types of MRSA were found from different foci in the same patient in 8 of 21 cases (38%) by phenotyping. The same typing results were obtained in 7 of 8 the multiple strains isolated cases by PFGE. Two types were obtained from another case by phenotyping, but by PFGF, 3 types were obtained. We consider that phenotyping method is convenient and reliable for judgment of the difference in types isolated from different foci in the same patient, but PFGE possibly provide us more detailed epidemiological information. The epidemiological investigation must be done very carefully, especially in immunocompromised hosts as MRSA bacteremia cases, because the chance of multiple strains infection is relatively high among these cases.