Systemic Nocardia Infection in a Patient with Behcet's Disease

Abstract

Behcet’s disease is a systemic inflammatory vascular disease with different clinical features. It may be necessary to use high-dose corticosteroids or other immunosuppressive agents during the course of the disease due to different complications. Nocardia is an opportunistic infection with a quite high mortality which is frequently seen in immunocompromised subjects. We want to present a patient who was being followed with the diagnosis of uveitis resistant to therapy and who used long-term, high-dose immunosuppressives; consequently, he died due to systemic Nocardia infection. We diagnosed pulmonary infection, intramuscular abscess in the abdomen and multiple brain abscesses due to Nocardia infection. The patient whose clinical condition deteriorated under therapy died. We think that the disseminated Nocardia infection was related to immunosuppressive therapy rather than Behcet’s disease. In our review of literature, we could not cite any report about disseminated Nocardia infection in a patient with Behcet's disease during this period (Medline 1966-August 2000)