BRUCELLOSIS PRESENTING AS CHRONIC ARTHRITIS: A STUDY IN EASTERN INDIA WITH A REVIEW OF BRUCELLAR
Anindita Sen, Urmita Chakraborty, Debasmita Chatterjee, Prabir Quila, Parthajit Banerjee and Satadal Das*
ABSTRACT
Although brucellosis commonly presents as fever of unknown origin, it has polymorphic features that affect different organ systems. Involvement of osteoarticular system is also not uncommon in brucellosis with arthritis being the main feature. In this paper we attempt to find out brucellosis as a cause in patients with chronic arthritis. This study was carried out over a 1 year period from January 2015 to December 2015. Blood samples were collected from cases of chronic arthritis which were subjected to three serological and one genus specific PCR test for the detection of Brucella infection. Out of 170 cases of chronic arthritis, 86 (50.59%) patients showed serological positivity for all the three tests and 24 (14.11%) patients cases showed positivity for genus specific PCR. This finding clearly indicates that a significant number of brucellosis cases are there presenting as chronic arthritis. Thus every case of chronic arthritis not responding to conventional treatment should be investigated for brucellosis, especially if there is a history of contact with animals and animal products.
Keywords: Brucellosis, Arthritis, ELISA, PCR.
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