Gheorghe Plăcintă

Tatiana Știrbu

BMC Infectious Diseases

PubMed

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POSTER PRESENTATION Open Access
Larval toxocariasis with persistent eosinophilia in
a patient with chronic hepatitis B – a case report
Gheorghe Plăcintă*, Tatiana Știrbu
From The 9th Edition of the Scientific Days of the National Institute for Infectious Diseases Prof Dr Matei Bals
Bucharest, Romania. 23-25 October 2013
Background
The associated forms of larval toxocariasis and hepatitis
have a particular evolution with various manifestations
depending on the prevalence of pathology. In both cases
this liver involvement and specific antiparasitic treat-
ment may aggravate the liver disease.
Case report
We present the case of a patient with clinical symptoms
of lightheadedness, fatigue, memory disturbances, tremor
of the limbs, nausea and blurred vision. The laboratory
tests found the presence of hepatomegaly, interstitial
nodules on ultrasound exam, positive HBsAg, hypereosi-
nophilia (40%) and increased titers of anti-Toxocara -
71.98. After diagnosing the larval toxocariasis, we
prescribed treatment with albendazole and hepatopro-
tective drugs for 14 days. After a month, the general
condition improved with the reduction of cytolysis syn-
drome, eosinophilia (14%) and the titer of anti-Toxocara
(28). The patient was followed-up for 7 years, during
which there were periodic relapses requiring repeated
courses of benzimidazole derivatives. It is worth mention-
ing that the pronounced worsening of the general condi-
tion in 2010 was caused by the association of other
parasitic invasions (giardiasis and ascaridiasis) which also
resulted in a marked increase of eosinophilia (60%),
increased titers of anti-Toxocara (73.47) and a high level
of transaminases (ALT – 87 U/l). After treatment with
albendazole the general condition improved with the
disappearance of clinical signs and the reduction of
cytolysis syndrome.
Conclusion
The case shows the chronic nature of the Toxocara
invasion with the possibility of repeated relapses and
wavy evolution of the disease, with a strong correlation
between the intensity of invasion and clinical picture.
The presence of an association with liver pathology will
only lead to worsening the evolution, as was demonstrated
by the data in the literature.
Published: 16 December 2013
doi:10.1186/1471-2334-13-S1-P77
Cite this article as: Plăcintă and Știrbu: Larval toxocariasis with
persistent eosinophilia in a patient with chronic hepatitis B – a case
report. BMC Infectious Diseases 2013 13(Suppl 1):P77.
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* Correspondence: gheorgheplacinta@yahoo.com
Department of Infectious Diseases, Faculty for Continuing Medical Education,
Nicolae Testemițanu State Medical and Pharmacy University, Chişinău,
Republic of Moldova
Plăcintă and Știrbu BMC Infectious Diseases 2013, 13(Suppl 1):P77
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/13/S1/P77
© 2013 Plăcintă and Știrbu; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Larval toxocariasis with persistent eosinophilia in a patient with chronic hepatitis B – a case report

http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-13-S1-P77

Larval toxocariasis with persistent eosinophilia in a patient with chronic hepatitis B – a case report

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