TITLE:
Chronic Meningococcemia
AUTHORS:
Rita Veiga Ferraz, Filipa Ceia, Raquel Duro, Ana Cláudia Carvalho, Paulo Andrade, Susana Silva, António Sarmento
KEYWORDS:
Neisseria meningitidis, Meningococcal Disease, Chronic Meningococemia
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Infectious Diseases,
Vol.6 No.3,
August
2,
2016
ABSTRACT: Neisseria meningitidis is a
gram-negative diplococcus which causes invasive disease. The most frequent
clinical manifestations caused by infection with this pathogen, are meningitis
and fulminant septic shock. More benign forms with a subacute or chronic
pattern are rare but still can evolve to meningitis and have a fatal outcome.
This entity is difficult to recognize, as febrile erythema with otherwise good
general condition may simulate other diseases, namely viral infections. The
authors reported the cases of two
healthy young adults who were misdiagnosed with a viral infection. What they
really had was a meningococcemia without meningitis presenting with mild and
unspecific symptoms, such as, intermittent fever and a discrete macular rash.
We pretend to highlight this rare, unspecific
and heterogeneous symptoms which can provoke negligence of a potentially life
threatening condition.