Gonococcal sepsis in a 32-year-old female: a case report
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2018
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BioMed Central
Abstract
Background: Neisseria gonorrhoeae is a Gram-negative bacterium which afects the urethra, throat, rectum and cer‑
vix of patients and often associated with sexually transmitted infections. The global epidemiology of the disease is not
well characterised especially in resource constraint countries due to poor diagnostic capacity and inefcient reporting
systems. Although important, little is known about the propensity of this bacterium to cause sepsis in immunocom‑
petent individuals.
Case presentation: A 32-year-old female presented with fever and generalised malaise to a rural hospital in Ghana.
The patient had previously been diagnosed as having enteric fever from a neighbouring health facility. Blood and
urine samples were collected from the patient and cultured using standard microbiological and molecular tech‑
niques. Neisseria gonorrhoeae was isolated from the blood which was resistant to penicillin, ciprofoxacin and cotri‑
moxazole. The patient recovered following ceftriaxone and azithromycin treatment.
Conclusion: This case highlights the importance of N. gonorrhoeae in causing sepsis and emphasises the need for
blood culture investigation in diagnosis of patients presenting with fever.
Description
This article is published by BioMed Central and is also available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-018-3346-1
Keywords
Citation
Owusu et al. BMC Res Notes (2018) 11:253 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-018-3346-1