A brucellosis case presenting with mass formation suggestive for tumor in soft tissue.

We report here a 70-year-old female patient who was diagnosed with brucellosis and presented with mass formation resembling a tumor. The mass was protuberant, 10 cm from the skin surface with a diameter of 15 cm, located at the inferior-lateral region of the left scapula. Brucella melitensis was yielded from culture of mass fluid. The patient responded to ceftriaxone, rifampin and doxycycline therapy and recovered without any sequela at the end of surgery and 3 months of medical treatment.

Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole induced rash and fatal hematologic disorders.

Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) is a combination chemotherapeutic agent, a commonly used antibiotic. Adverse drug reactions occur in 6-8% of patients. Although, the most common adverse reactions include mild gastrointestinal distress and cutaneous events, also a wide range of hematological abnormalities have been ascribed to TMP-SMX. We report a 40-year-old male patient who developed an early onset neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, generalised rash and oral candidiasis after 5 days long TMP-SMX therapy. Although generalised rash may seen more and improves with discontinuation of the therapy; severe neutropenia, thrombocytopenia and oral candidiasis are seen very rare and rarely leads to fatality as it was in our case. Despite thrombocyte transfusions, whole blood transfusions, red cell concentrates and filgrastim therapy we lost our patient. We want to underline that although the TMP-SMX combination is usually well tolerated it can also lead to fatal complications.

N-acetylcysteine for preventing pump-induced oxidoinflammatory response during cardiopulmonary bypass.

PURPOSE: To investigate the effect of N-acetylcysteine on preventing pump-induced oxidoinflammatory response during cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). METHODS: Forty patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) were randomly divided into a study group (n = 20), given 50 mg kg(-1) N-acetylcysteine intravenously for 3 days, and a control group (n = 20) given saline. Serum samples were collected for measurement of myeloperoxidase (MPO), malondialdehyde (MDA), interleukin-6, Alpha1-acid glycoprotein (AAGP), and C-reactive protein (CRP) during surgery and postoperatively. RESULTS: The MPO and MDA values showed a similar pattern during and after CPB in the study group, with significantly less variance than in the control group. Interleukin-6 showed similar patterns in the two groups, but the data from 30 min after the start of CPB and from 6 h post-CPB were significantly different. The AAGP and CRP values were both elevated during CPB in the two groups without a significant difference, but 6 and 24 h post-CPB, the values were significantly higher in the control group than in the study group. CONCLUSIONS: N-Acetylcysteine decreased pump-induced oxidoinflammatory response during CPB, suggesting that it could be a novel therapy for assisting in the prevention of CBP-induced oxidoinflammatory damage.