Chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) is a primary immunodeficiency caused by defects of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase. Catalase-positive bacteria and fungi are phagocytosed, but persist within phagocytes, resulting in granulomatous inflammation. Although allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is a curative treatment for CGD, HSCT sometimes leads to fatal outcomes related to the exacerbation of persistent infectious or post-infectious inflammatory diseases, particularly in adolescent and young adult patients with a history of recurrent infections and/or multiple granulomas in organs. Here, we present the case of a young adult with X-linked CGD in whom multiple lesions were found in lungs and lymph nodes on both computed tomography and positron emission tomography (PET) scans before allogeneic HSCT, but all the lesions disappeared only on PET scan 5 months after HSCT. Monitoring the activity of multiple pre-existing lesions with PET scan may be beneficial to adolescent and young adult CGD-patients undergoing allogeneic HSCT.
Keywords: Chronic granulomatous disease; FDG-PET; bone marrow transplantation.