Experience in the diagnosis and treatment of pneumonia caused by infection with Tropheryma whipplei: A case series

Zhixiong Fang; Qiong Liu; Wei Tang; Hongyin Yu; Min Zou; Haiming Zhang; Haiyan Xue; Sha Lin; Yi Pei; Jingwen Ai; Jun Chen

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17132

Experience in the diagnosis and treatment of pneumonia caused by infection with Tropheryma whipplei: A case series

Heliyon. 2023 Jun 9;9(6):e17132. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17132. eCollection 2023 Jun.

Authors

Zhixiong Fang¹, Qiong Liu², Wei Tang¹, Hongyin Yu³, Min Zou⁴, Haiming Zhang¹, Haiyan Xue¹, Sha Lin¹, Yi Pei⁵, Jingwen Ai⁶, Jun Chen⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Infectious Disease and Public Health, Central Hospital of Xiangtan, Hunan province, China.
² Linxiang People's Hospital, Hunan province, China.
³ Center for Infectious Diseases, The First People's Hospital of Huaihua, Hunan, China.
⁴ Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, The First People's Hospital of Xiangtan City Affiliated to Nanhua University, Hunan, China.
⁵ Department of Tuberculosis, Changsha Central Hospital, Changsha, China.
⁶ Department of Infectious Disease, Huashan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
⁷ Department of Liver Diseases, Third Hospital of Shenzhen, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.

Abstract

Tropheryma whipplei (TW) is the root cause of Whipple's disease (WD), a rare infectious illness leading to multi-organ impairment. A prominent feature of WD is acute pneumonia, which can be exceedingly challenging to diagnose clinically due to the pathogen's surreptitious nature. However and significantly, with the advent of metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF), it offers clinicians a potent tool at their disposal to detect TW infections. The present study conducted a retrospective analysis of clinical data gleaned from five patients in Hunan Province in China. Findings in this study demonstrated the potential of BALF-mNGS in diagnosing pneumonia caused by TW infection.

Keywords: Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid; Metagenomic next-generation sequencing; Pneumonia; Tropheryma whipplei.