Cats and immunosuppressive disease
By Linda on Feb 9, 2011 in Infections | comments(0)
Excerpt:
Bacillary angiomatosis is a recently described infectious disease that
usually affects immunosupressed hosts with a previous history of contact
with cats. We report a rare case of bacillary angiomatosis in an
immunocompetent 59-year-old woman with no history of previous exposure to
cats, and atypical clinical features (fever and subcutaneous nodules with
ulceration on the left ankle).
Histopathology of the lesion showed extensive ulceration and reactive
tumor-like vascular proliferation of the blood vessels with swollen
endothelial cells and an inflammatory infiltrate including neutrophils and
lymphocytes in the dermis and subcutis. Staining with the Warthin-Starry
method demonstrated the presence of clustered bacilli located in the
extracellular matrix adjacent to the proliferating endothelial cells.
Diagnosis was confirmed with the detection of Bartonella spp. DNA in the
affected skin and in bone marrow using polymerase chain reaction.
