Hyperferritinemic Sepsis: An Opportunity for Earlier Diagnosis and Intervention?

We describe a case of an infant with HSV meningitis and septic shock who demonstrated a remarkably high serum ferritin level. Aggressive pediatric intensive care and the administration of high-dose glucocorticoids were not able to reverse the multiple organ dysfunctions. Subsequent autopsy identified the presence of hemophagocytosis, thus the patient fulfilled hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) criteria post-mortem. This case highlights that serum ferritin may be an important early indicator of mortality in sepsis due to a cytokine storm similar to macrophage activation syndrome and HLH.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Frontiers in Pediatrics

• Publication date

  2016-08-02

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3389/fped.2016.00077PMID 27532033PMCID 4969285
• 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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