A Challenging Case of Visceral Leishmaniasis in a Transplant Recipient

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Author Info

Catarina Santos Joana Coutinho Raquel Chorao Teofilo Yan

Corresponding Author

Joana Coutinho
Nephrologist, Hospital Amato Lusitano, Portugal

A B S T R A C T

Visceral leishmaniasis is a rare disease in Western countries. We present the case of a 72-year-old male recipient of a related live donor renal transplant 41 years earlier and a past medical history of visceral leishmaniasis, who presented with progressive malaise, diarrhea, weight loss and darkening of skin, 11 months after the first episode. The main finding on blood work was severe hyponatremia and pancytopenia. He was diagnosed with relapsing visceral leishmaniasis and treated with liposomal amphotericin B (L-AmB), reduction of immunosuppressive therapy and supportive therapy. Throughout treatment he had worsening bradycardia and hyponatremia accompanied with liver failure and acute congestive heart failure. The patient survived the leishmaniasis episode but had sequels of chronic liver disease and chronic heart failure. The authors report the case due to its clinical challenge and due to the fact that data on how to treat immunodeficient patients with relapsing leishmaniasis is scarce.

Article Info

Article Type

Case Report

Publication history

Received: Thu 23, Jan 2020
Accepted: Mon 24, Feb 2020
Published: Sat 29, Feb 2020

Copyright

© 2023 Joana Coutinho. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.TCR.2020.01.02