Avoiding laboratory pitfalls in infectious diseases.

Fever of unknown origin and Q-fever: a case series in a Bulgarian hospital

Background: Fever of unknown origin (FUO) is a perplexing medical problem. The causes for FUO are more than 200 diseases. The aim of the study was to present human clinical cases of Coxiella burnetii infection debuting as FUO. Methods: The following methods were conducted in the study: literature search, laboratory, imaging, and statistical methods. Criteria of Durack and Street were applied f...

Pitfalls and artifacts in the interpretation of oncologic PET/CT of the chest

PET/CT is widely used for the evaluation of patients with thoracic malignancies. Although the levels of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake are usually high in neoplastic diseases, they can also be physiological, due to artifacts. In addition, FDG uptake can occur in benign conditions such as infectious, inflammatory, and iatrogenic lesions. Furthermore, some malignant tumors, such as adenocarc...

Clinical and laboratory manifestation and outcome of icterohemorrhagic leptospirosis patients in Northern Iran

Background: Icterohemorrhagic form of leptospirosis has a high mortality rate.  In this study, the clinical manifestations, epidemiologic and laboratory findings and outcome of Weil’s disease were investigated. Methods: A descriptive cross- sectional study was conducted on 66 consecutive patients with icterohemorrhagic leptospirosis who were admitted to Razi Hospital (The Therapeutic Center ...

Candidate gene studies in respiratory disease: avoiding the pitfalls.

Prevalence of infectious diseases in patients with end stage renal disease in Gorgan City in Iran

Background: The mortality rate of sepsis and pneumonia is higher in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients than in the general population. Bacterial infections are the most common cause of hospitalization in dialysis patients and the most common source of bacteremia is vascular access in these patients. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of infectious causes of hospitalizati...