Pulmonary cryptococcosis complicating interstitial lung disease in a patient with systemic lupus erythematosus

We report a case of primary pulmonary cryptococcosis in a 59-year-old female patient with a history of systemic lupus erythematosus, interstitial lung disease and glaucoma. She presented with a cough, severe fatigue, unintentional weight loss, shortness of breath (increase in home oxygen use from baseline) and pleuritic chest pain of 2 months duration. During these 2 months, her symptoms had worsened despite multiple hospital visits, empirical antibiotics and empirical increase of her steroid dosage. Cytopathology of the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid showed yeast cells with narrow-based budding and grew Cryptococcus neoformans on fungal culture. She was treated with oral fluconazole 400 mg/day for 6 months with an improvement in cough, decrease in shortness of breath (return to baseline oxygen use) and resolution of pleuritic chest pain.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  BMJ Case Reports

• Publication date

  2019-08-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1136/bcr-2019-229403PMID 31451456PMCID PMC6721421
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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